IBM introduced the first commercial computer hard drive in 1956, known as the RAMAC 305, which weighed over a ton and required a forklift just to move it around.

A closer look

IBM introduced the first commercial computer hard drive in 1956, known as the RAMAC 305, which weighed over a ton and required a forklift just to move it around. Despite being the size of two large refrigerators, this absolute behemoth of mid-century engineering could only hold five measly megabytes of data, which is barely enough to store a single high-resolution photograph of your lunch today. Companies actually rented these giant metal closets for roughly three thousand dollars a month just to store basic text records. Looking back at the RAMAC really puts things into perspective when you catch yourself whining about your impossibly thin terabyte smartphone running out of storage space because you refuse to delete thousands of blurry screenshots you took three years ago and will absolutely never look at again