Part 1 of Essay
Even before the first computer was conceptualized, data had already been stored on hard copy medium and used with a machine. As early as 1801, the punched card was used as a control device for mechanical looms. One and one-half centuries later, IBM joined punched cards to computers, encoding binary information as pattern ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... used for computer data storage is the same technology used in the various forms of magnetic tape from audiocassette to videocassette recorders. One of the first computer storage devices was the magnetic tape drive. Magnetic tape is a sequential data storage medium. To read data, a tape drive must wind through the spool of tape to the exact location of the desired information. To write, the tape drive encodes data sequentially on the tape. Because tape drives cannot randomly access or write data like disk ....