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Computer Punch Cards Making a Comeback?
IBM researchers have gone back to the pioneering days of computers to create
a novel method of storing data. A miniaturized version of the punch cards used in
some of the earliest computers has helped the company store the equivalent of 25
million pages of text in a space no bigger than a postage stamp. The technology,
dubbed "Millipede," records individual bits of data using tiny heated levers to
make holes in a plastic film. The whole array of 1024 levers is only 3 mm square.
Each lever is 0.5 mm thick and 70 mm long. A complex heating and cooling process
is used to read the bits from the film.
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