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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)

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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 […]