Center had a simple IBM 1620 computer, which occupied approximately the same space as six or seven refrigerators. Its memory capacity was 24K, or 24000 bytes’ (chapters’) worth of information. The IBM 1620 served the needs of 30 to40 active researchers, who published numerous books and articles each year.
Right now, I’m working on a laptop computer with a memory of 128 megabytes: 5333 times as much memory as the old 1620. The pocket computer I use to maintain addresses and phone numbers has a memory 167 times that of the IBM 1620. Even the wristwatch I’m wearing has one-twelfth the memory of the huge machine that served the needs of 30 to 40 researchers at the Survey Research Center not that long ago!
Most personal computers today use hard drives that store data in the millions of bytes (megabytes) or billions of bytes (gigabytes). For example, An external hard drive sitting beside it, no larger than a pack of cards, holds 14 gigabytes. Apart from this built-in storage capacity, the advent of CD-ROMs, Zip drives, and other storage devices has vastly expanded the storage capacity of PCs. CD-ROMs can store hundreds of millions of bytes of data on small, thin disks. The “ROM” in CD-ROM stands for “read-only memory”; originally, this meat that you could retrieve data stored there by the manufacturer but you couldn’t write anything new to the disk. Currently a new generation of rewritable CDs is eliminating that limitation.
The Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract CD-ROM is a good example of the value of CD-ROMs to social researchers. Many other reference works and encyclopedias are also useful, such as Microsoft’s Encarta. Historical researchers are possibly the most blessed, with volumes of materials easily available on different historical periods and on specific topics.