Making the Perfect Record: From Inscription to Impression in Early Magnetic RecordingMain MenuAboutAbstract for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PIntroductionIntroduction to Making the Perfect Record: From Inscription to Impression in Early Magnetic RecordingNotesNotes for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PMediaMedia for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PAcknowledgmentsAcknowledgments for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PTechnical InformationTechnical Information for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PReferencesReferences for “Making the Perfect Record,” American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U PJentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339This essay is part of the “New Media” special issue of American Literature (volume 85, number 4, December 2013). See http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2370230. Version 1 of the site is (c) 2013 by Duke University Press.
The Emergence of the Hard Disk Drive
12014-01-01T07:00:21-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca53392493On the Importance of the IBM 305 RAMACplain2014-01-01T07:08:20-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339In 1956, the IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that used a moving head hard disk drive.
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12013-12-19T07:07:36-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339IBM 305 RAMAC: Promotional Material (ca. 1956)4International Business Machines Corporation, Promotional Video for IBM 305 RAMACplain2014-01-01T20:38:08-08:00Jentery Sayersbecbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339
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12013-12-12T11:09:43-08:00Prehistory for Today’s Magnetic Media13The Particulars of Magnetic Recording Necessarily Frame Our Understanding of Contemporary Computing and Storageplain2014-01-03T20:38:49-08:00Still, the once-new device helps us better understand how people initially learned to simultaneously ignore, trust, and desire magnetic storage—to examine how faith in magnetic recording emerged between the 1870s and 1910s, well before now-ubiquitous hard drives (not to mention seemingly unlimited cloud storage). Put this way, the story of a failed sound machine offers a prehistory for contemporary computing, invested as it often is in the automagical transubstantiation of magnetic impressions (on platters) into data expressions (on screens and through speakers).
This prehistory matters because it not only contextualizes contemporary computing and today’s magnetic media through mechanical age audio cultures. It also sparks some speculation about what artifacts are not at hand, in the archive, or on file—about what does not ultimately go into storage. If, during the development of early magnetic technologies and media, the perfect record would never lie and would never be written, then we must ask how such a record was actively constructed, through what material procedures of impression and playback, and in what relation to transforming notions of proof, evidence, perception, and memory. To be clear, then, this prehistory is an account of making records, not giving or taking them.