Information has always existed, and we know so much about past centuries precisely because people have learned to store and transmit it.
Initially, people transmitted information by word of mouth, constantly modifying it involuntarily. But later at the disposal of mankind appeared such opportunities as drawing and writing. What can we say about the current high technologies that are capable of storing terabytes of information.
And yet, the very first tool for storing information is the hand of a person in the literal sense of the word. It all started with cave painting.
How it all began
Since primitive times, people began to record events. The beginning can be called a period of time from 40 to 10 thousand years BC. On the walls of caves and rocks, people depicted animals, various everyday scenes, tools with which they lived and hunted.
Today it’s hard to say whether people consciously wrote down history even then, or simply decorated the walls of their homes with drawings. Nevertheless, it was thanks to this that scientists learned a lot about life in those centuries, and accordingly, we also learned.
Cuneiform
A little later, in the 7th century BC, a new way of recording information appeared - cuneiform writing. Special clay tablets were made, and while they were still raw, inscriptions and drawings were made on them. Then, to immortalize them, the tablets were burned in furnaces.
These methods began to be invented, since human memory is unreliable. To store information in its original, undistorted form, they decided to use this method and created a special room for these plates. The first libraries were filled with such clay tablets. For example, the library of Ashurbanipal (Nineveh) contained about 30,000 different tablets.
In ancient Rome, at about the same time, a similar method was used - wooden tablets were covered with colored wax and then scribes applied information with a sharp object (stylus).
Paper predecessors
In ancient Egypt, around the 3rd millennium BC, they learned how to make papyrus. Later, this technology spread throughout the Mediterranean.
Plants of the sedge family were used to make papyrus . The inscriptions were applied using a special pen. This was the very first tool for storing information, or rather, applying it to a medium, which is still used today.
In the 2nd century BC, another analogue of paper appeared - parchment. Gradually, he was recognized as more reliable and replaced papyrus from everyday life. For the first time they began to make it in the city of Pergamum, where the name of the invention came from. Parchment is the unfinished dressed skin of animals (sheep, cows or goats).
Water washable inks had already been invented by then, and if they were applied to parchment, they could be removed and new inscriptions applied. Another advantage of parchment was the ability to take notes on both sides.
First paper
According to historical facts, the first paper appeared in China in the period of the 2nd-1st centuries BC. The technology began to spread thanks to the Arabs and only in the 8-9th century AD, before that it was kept in the strictest confidence.
Another interesting way to store information is birch bark (this is the top layer of birch bark). It was widely used, since in Russia paper appeared only in the 16th century.
The first industrial technology
The very first tool for storing information in the era of the development of the world industrial economy is a punch card.
In 1804, Joseph Marie Jacquard invented the punch cards that he used for his loom to define a complex pattern on fabrics. But Herman Hollerith, who first proposed recording the US census data in 1890 on them, invented them as a storage device.
Later, this method was modified into punched tapes, which were used to send telegrams.
The magnetic nature of carriers
In the 50s of the 20th century, magnetic tape appeared for the first computers. Then came the cassettes on which the music was recorded. This technology has quickly spread around the world.
Around the same time, a magnetic disk was already invented. The development is owned by IBM.
In 1969, a floppy disk (diskette) appeared.
Technologies used to date
The computer hard drive was developed in 1956. And this is the very first information storage tool that is still used today. Of course, his appearance was significantly different from what we know today. Nevertheless, the technology is still actively used and continues to evolve, having long been widespread throughout the globe.
There are also portable and removable storage media, such as CD- and DVD-ROM drives, USB-Flash drives.
Even newer technologies are cloud storages that are created on the Internet. Now any of your information will be available to you from anywhere, there is no need to carry anything except a PC or smartphone.
The history of information storage includes many more different ways that have been recognized as ineffective and have been forgotten.
Information in each of us
Our body also stores information. This is called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). It is DNA that is responsible for the storage of hereditary information in our body, as well as the transfer and implementation of a program for the development of living cells. Moreover, DNA is not only in humans, but also in plants, animals and any living organisms.