World Data Storage: How Much Did 2TB Equal in the Past?

[Hornbein]

I bought a thing the size of a pack of cigarettes that holds 2 terabytes. My question is, in what year was the total electronic data storage of the entire world equal to 2 terabytes?

 

[jedishrfu]

I don't know how you’d even quantify this to answer your question.

If you limited it to books and legal documents or if you included information on individuals collected by churches and governments.

If you limited it to bibles, korans and other related known religious literature you might get a feeling for the growth curve.

 

[Astronuc]

My question is, in what year was the total electronic data storage of the entire world equal to 2 terabytes?

I don't believe that the data is available to make such a determination.

A claim: "Magnetic tape was first used to record computer data in 1951 on the UNIVAC I."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape_data_storage#UNIVAC

The first Univac was accepted by the United States Census Bureau on March 31, 1951, and was dedicated on June 14 that year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I

Starting back in 1971, Michael S. Hart launched http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:About and digitized the U.S. Declaration of Independence, becoming the first eBook in the world. (To put the date into context, 1971 was the year that the first email message was ever sent– between two mainframe computers!) In 1985, the Voyager Company, a pioneer in CD-ROMs, was founded and published “expanded books” on CD-ROM including Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, and in 1993, Digital Book, Inc. offered the first 50 digital books on floppy disk.

https://govbooktalk.gpo.gov/2014/03...m-1930s-readies-to-todays-gpo-ebook-services/

One would have to find the records of data storage by various governments and corporations, most of which is probably unavailable.

 

[jedishrfu]

There was that one anecdotal notion that 80 column punch cards could hold a person's financial information for the IRS.

https://www.righto.com/2017/04/1950s-tax-preparation-plugboard.html

So number of people x 80 cols(bytes) = data storage for IRS for a year.

As an aside, one programmer's collection of punch cards:

https://www.jkmscott.net/data/Punched Cards.html

 

[jedishrfu]

I found some more anecdotal data regarding yahoo data storage vs the human brain here:

https://www.cnsnevada.com/what-is-the-memory-capacity-of-a-human-brain/

 

[Tom.G]

I found some more anecdotal data regarding yahoo data storage vs the human brain here:

https://www.cnsnevada.com/what-is-the-memory-capacity-of-a-human-brain/

Oops!

Watch out for the numbers on that site. They multiply 125 by 4.7 and get 1.

...125 trillion synapses – 4.7 bits/synapse, and about 1 trillion bytes equaling 1 TB (Terabyte).

For context, they tried to find the capacity of the Human brain in bytes.
For an 8-bit byte I get 73TB.