[Year 12 IT Apps] Data retrieval technology - 1937 style

[Roland Gesthuizen]

Took a bit of digging but I found a source and back story for this photograph if anybody wants to use it. 

Bciusa.com,. 'Photoshot > Image View'. N.p., 2015. Web. 17 May 2015.  http://www.bciusa.com/view_image.jsp?img_id=101869

"The offices of the Central Social Institution of Prague, Czechoslovakia with the largest vertical letter file in the world. Consisting of cabinets arranged from floor to ceiling tiers covering over 4000 square feet containing over 3000 drawers 10 feet long. It has electric operated elevator desks which rise, fall and move left or right at the push of a button. to stop just before drawer desired. The drawers also open and close electronically. Thus work which formerly taxed 400 workers is now done by 20 with a minimum of effort. 26th April 1937 “

I would agree with Mark that it does look rather like a hard disk drive. Just trying to think how they could configure it as a raid array … hhmmm

—
Roland GESTHUIZEN
http://about.me/rgesthuizen

> On 4 May 2015, at 10:19 am, ken price <kenjprice at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm intrigued as to how similar the moving chairs are to read-write heads on hard disks.
> 
> It's almost as if hard drive technology miniaturised the whole system of " data read/write people in chairs with x/y axis movement". The access times would be subject to the mechanical limitations of moving those Czech guys around the shelving.
> 
> I wonder if they had head crashes in that system? 
> 
> kp
> 
> On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 10:13 AM, Laurie Savage <08327998 at pvgc.vic.edu.au <mailto:08327998 at pvgc.vic.edu.au>> wrote:
> Databasement?
> 
> LS
> 
> Laurie Savage
> 
> On 1 May 2015 at 13:44, Mark <mark at vceit.com <mailto:mark at vceit.com>> wrote:
> Data retrieval in Prague, 1937
> 
> http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/2287100/84565802.jpg <http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/2287100/84565802.jpg>
> 
> -- 
> 
> >> Witty sig goes HERE <<
> 
> Mark Kelly
> mark AT vceit DOT com
> http://vceit.com <http://vceit.com/>
> 
> - Gainfully Unemployed
> 
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