Computer Memory

Forget me not

The processors get all the glitzy PR so the humble computer memory often gets forgotten. It is vital to the way a computer works though. So here we let’s celebrate those whose research and engineering have pushed forward memory technology over the years and are still doing so.

Shouting at Memory: Where Did My Write Go?

Bat sending out sound waves

How can computer scientists improve computer memory, ensuring saving things is more secure? If Vasileios Klimis of QMUL’s Theory research group has his way, they will be learning from bats…(Read on)

An Wang’s Magnetic Memory

An Wang was one of the great pioneers of the early days of computing. Just as the invention of the transistor led to massive advances in circuit design and ultimately computer chips, Wang’s invention of magnetic core memory provided the parallel advance needed in memory technology… (read on)

Herman Hollerith: from punch cards to a special company

A Hollerith punch card

Herman Hollerith, the son of immigrants, struggled early on at school and then later in bookkeeping at college but it didn’t stop him inventing machines that used punch cards to store data. He founded a company to make and sell his machines. It turned into the company now called IBM, which of course helped propel us into the computer age.
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Edge-notched cards and relational databases

Edge-notched cards implement a physical, but still powerful, version of a database: an organised way of storing data from cards with holes and notches in them … (read on)

Core rope memory

Earth as seen from the moon

Weaving, in the form of the Jacquard loom, inspired Charles Babbage. He intended to use the same kind of punch card to store programs in his Analytical Engine, which had it been built would have been the first computer. However, weaving had a much more direct use in computing history. Weaving helped get us to the moon because it gave NASA dependable memory… (read on)

Make your own core rope memory

Woven core rope memory in and out of beads for 1s and 0s

Make your own core rope memory storing your name or some secret message, as a bracelet or just to hang as a decoration … (read on)

Quicksilver memory

Silver stream of swirling liquid

Some 1950s computers used tubes filled with mercury as a memory to store numbers. Mercury is a metal that is liquid at room temperature. It’s also known as quicksilver as it flows very easily, but in computing it was actually used to trap information…. (read on)

Quipu: tie a knot in it

Quipu

Quipu (the Quechua word for ‘knot’), used by the Incas, are knotted, and sometimes differently coloured, strings, made from the hair fibres of llamas or alpacas. They were an early number representation and many of them formed a simple kind of database …. (read on)

Custard computers (from custard transistors)

Both logic gates and memory are made of transistors, so find out how transistors work by making one from custard…. (read on)

Molecular memory and memristors

What happens when computers need so much memory that they start to test the laws of physics? and the new member of the electronics family born in 2008…. (read on)

Lego Computer Science: Turing Machines -The Tape

A Lego Turing Machine Tape

It it possible to make a working computer out of lego and you do not even have to pay for an expensive robot Mindstorm kit…but only if you are willing to provide the power yourself. First you need to create a tape…the memory of your computer…(read on)

More to come (of course)