" />

Weekend Edition: When I Was A Kid, We Had To Listen To Music On Flat Petrochemical Disks …

Blog The Primary Main Objective” does some geeky calculations to find that if you wanted to encode a mp3 on punch cards, one three minute song at 128 kbps would take a stack 5′9″ tall.

A normal capacity iPod would require a stack 16 miles high.

As they note. “That such a huge leap in technology is well within living memory is astonishing.”

For you kids out there wondering what a punch card is (was?), Boing Boing linked to this collection of images from “How It Works: The Computer,” published in 1971, reprinted 1979. It’s another reminder of how far we’ve come.

(and for a glimpse of what life was like before the word “ergonomics” was invented, see this page from the book)

Share this post!
  • del.icio.us
  • digg
  • Fark
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • YahooMyWeb
  • SphereIt
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter

Similar Independent Sources posts:

  • Wait Until Microsoft Charges You $99 For The Non-running OS: Off topic: ... A quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually running. The idea behind the feat, first proposed in 1998, is to put ...
  • Album cover performance art: Wondering what to do with your collection of old LPs. How about posing with them? I'm not sure if this is an art project or just a guy with way too mu ...
  • Feel Safer?: Boing Boing pointed us to this example of how wacky airport security is: Yes, the air travellers of America are now safe from terrorist penguins. (the ...
  • Waitress Gets Own ID When Carding Patron; Hilarity Ensues: Dumb luck! What are the odds of this? A woman, who works as a waitress at a bar, loses her wallet in another town from where she works. Then three wee ...
  • “I Just Remembered To Sue You”: A repressed memory is the memory of a traumatic event unconsciously retained in the mind, where it is said to adversely affect conscious thought, desi ...

Comments are below the ad.


One Response to “Weekend Edition: When I Was A Kid, We Had To Listen To Music On Flat Petrochemical Disks …”

  1. 1
    The Primary Main Objective… » Blog Archive » Nerd Math Applied to iPods Says:

    [...] One Response to “Nerd Math Applied to iPods” Independent Sources Says: August 9th, 2005 at 10:42 am [...]