Forwards and backwards

This week is the annual Consumer Electronics show or CES which showcases new and upcoming technology and gadgets.  While I’m looking forward to seeing what’s new, it's also interesting to look back at where we've been.  This is a picture looking back to 1956.  No, that’s not an early computer being loaded onto the plane.  That’s a hard drive.  Yes, just the hard drive. 

According to @HistoricalPics, which posted the picture, it’s a 5 megabyte drive and it weighed over 2,000 pounds.  Somehow my old laptop doesn't seem so heavy. 

For comparison, that’s approximately .00488 of a gigabyte.  The 8 GB flash drive I have in my pocket is about 1,638 times bigger.  It’s 1/8192nd of the smallest hard drive (40 GB) in our inventory and 1/51200th the size of the standard 250 GB hard drive we order with new PCs.  Or roughly 3 and a half of the old 3.5” floppy disks you might still have rattling around in the back of a drawer somewhere.