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INFORMATION STORAGE THROUGH TIME

  To our knowledge, first scripts were sculpted in stone slabs and walls.  Then letters were engraved in leafs, leathers, and metal sheets using nails and knives.  Next paper, ink, quills came.  Followed by nib, fountain pen, etc,.The major step is printing technology.  It revolutionized the news and information industry.
    
     With the development of science,  storage was also developed. After the invention of cine films, pages were photographed and stored as microfilms.  Audio and video information were stored in plastic tapes using magnetization.  Even today, ATM cards, hard disc uses magnetization.

     Next came the big digital revolution.  Here all the info. is represented in binary form.  The 0 and 1 is called binary digit or a bit.  8 bits or 16 bits make one byte.  Today we talk about info in terms of mega bytes and giga bytes.  Digital info has one major advantage.  Errors or noise cannot creep into digital storage because they are strictly either 0 or 1 and not in between.  Audio, video, text, numbers pictures can all be brought into digital format.

    1. Digital info can be stored using magnetization in disk.  The floppy disk has gone.

    2. Bytes are stored as pits(0) and bumps (1) in a DVD in miles long spiral track.  They are read and written using laser.  Hence they are known as optical media.

   3.  Bytes are also stored in silicon chip's memory in very compact form.

 Scientists are trying to store one bit using one atom or one electron's magnetic field.
DNA is the nature's way of storing and communicating info of living organisms.  Already a short movie has been stored successfully in DNA.  The life of the DNA memory is the longest one.

Because of the cloud storage (corporate servers), personal storage devices are fading away.

One day in future, all the world's knowledge may be in our thumb nail.

Science update:  IBM creates world's smallest magnet using single atom and stored data on it.  

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