{"id":462,"date":"2008-05-19T04:00:29","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T09:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=462"},"modified":"2008-05-18T22:38:23","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T03:38:23","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-peer-inside-the-cyborg-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/462\/retro-scan-of-the-week-peer-inside-the-cyborg-brain","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Peer Inside the Robot Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/era_drum_memory_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/era_drum_memory_small.jpg\" alt=\"ERA Magnetic Drum Storage Systems - Computer Drum Memory Ad - 1953\" class=\"centered\" \/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>Click above to see the full ad.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In this week&#8217;s Retro Scan, we&#8217;re looking <em>way<\/em> back to 1953.  Many computers in the 1950s used monster magnetic drum storage units, like the one you see above, as working memory &#8212; ala RAM &#8212; until the faster and more adept <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Core_memory\" target=\"_blank\">core memory<\/a> came along.  Using technology similar to a cylindrical hard disk, these beasts were understandably slow compared to their non-mechanical successors.<\/p>\n<p>If anybody out there ever worked with one of these, we&#8217;d definitely love to hear from you.<\/p>\n<p><center><em><small>[ From Scientific American, April 1953 ]<\/small><\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion topic of the week:<\/strong> How much RAM did your first computer have?<\/p>\n<p><small><em>If you use this image on your site, please support &#8220;Retro Scan of the Week&#8221; by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry.  Thanks.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Click above to see the full ad. In this week&#8217;s Retro Scan, we&#8217;re looking way back to 1953. Many computers in the 1950s used monster magnetic drum storage units, like the one you see above, as working memory &#8212; ala RAM &#8212; until the faster and more adept core memory came along. Using technology similar [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,26,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-computer-design","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}