USB flash drive (history of invention). What is a flash drive? Description and photo

"Great-grandfathers" of some computer components and devices that we take for granted today.

The world's first laptop

In 1979, a computer was created that can be called the progenitor of laptops. The device, called the GRiD Compass 1101, was developed by Silicon Valley engineers Bill Moggridge, Glen Edens, Dave Paulsen and former Xerox PARC employee John Ellenby. For a number of reasons, GRiD Compass went on sale only in April 1982 year, and had to compete with the second-ever laptop, the Osborne 1. The GRiD Compass (sales price $8,150), originally developed as a civilian commercial device, was used by NASA in the space shuttle as well as by the military.

Despite its laptop form factor, GRiD Compass 1101 did not have a built-in battery and only worked from the mains.

Some technical characteristics:
CPU: Intel 8086, 8MHz
RAM: 256 kb
Memory: 384 kB non-volatile bubble memory
Screen: 6-inch electroluminescent (ELD, predecessor to LED) graphics with a resolution of 320x240 pixels (an incredible innovation at the time!)
Connection: RS-232 port, GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus) port, built-in 1.2 kbit/s modem
OS: proprietary GRiD OS
Weight: 4.87 kg ( mobile computers at that time they weighed 2-3 times more!)
Frame: magnesium alloy

The world's first hard drive

September 13, 1956 IBM announced the world's first storage device hard drives: IBM 350. He was integral part mechanical IBM computer 305 RAMAC. Externally, the drive (it’s hard to call it a “hard drive”) is a cylindrical cabinet up to a person’s waist, and the total height of the cabinet-casing was 172 cm. The cabinet itself was a spindle with an array of 50 metal disks with a diameter of 610 mm. Each disk contained 100 clusters of 100 tracks, the rotation speed was 1200 rpm. A module with two heads moved up/down along a column of disks. The capacity of each drive was colossal at that time 3.75 megabytes. The data transfer rate reached 8800 characters/sec.

The very first USB flash drive

Today it is as common an accessory as a key chain. Modern compact flash drives are cheap, sold on almost every corner, and in terms of capacity, 64 GB models have long become commonplace. However, it all began December 15, 2000 year, when the very first commercial USB drive DiskOnKey, also known as ThumbDrive, developed by M-Systems, went on sale.

The capacity of the first DiskOnKey model was 8 MB, which was more than 5 times the capacity of 3-inch floppy disks, which were standard portable drives at that time. The data writing speed was approximately 10 times faster.

The very first digital camera

The first prototype of a fully digital camera in which a stream of light passed through optical system, is recorded by an array of photosensitive elements, was manufactured in December 1975 of the year by Eastman Kodak engineer Steve Sasson.

The camera took black and white pictures with a resolution of 0.01 megapixels. The camera weighed 3.6 kg, and a tape cassette was used as information storage. The process of recording a digitized image onto a cassette took 23 seconds; to view the resulting image, you had to install the cassette in a special reader that output the NTSC signal to the TV.

This camera was purely experimental and was not intended for subsequent commercialization. The first fully digital camera to go on sale was the DS-X from Fuji, released in December 1989 year and had a resolution of 0.4 megapixels.

This camera recorded images onto a flash card and came complete with a player for viewing images. The cost of the kit was $20,000.

First 5-inch hard drive

Seagate produced its first 5-inch hard drive in 1980. From this time on, memory components begin to resemble those we have now, but there are also nuances. Let's say that in the same year IBM released the first hard drive with a capacity of 1 GB; it weighed 550 kg.

The very first computer mouse

It is only worth noting that the patent for the mouse-type manipulator was received only in 1970. At the same time, the first one is more or less full-fledged computer, released for sale with such a manipulator, appeared in 1981. It was a Xerox 8010 SIS. Of course, the mouse was no longer encased in a wooden block, and looked more modern.

The world's first video card

An electronic device such as a video card originates from the one created in 1981 by the company’s specialists. IBM monochrome video adapter (MDA), made in the form of a separate board and providing a resolution of 720 by 350 pixels. The MDA adapter did not have graphics capabilities and was intended only for processing text information(although it had several playback modes).

Inventor: Fuji Masuoka
Country: Japan
Time of invention: 1984

Story USB creation Flash storage began in Japan in 1984, when Toshiba invented semiconductor reprogrammable flash memory. Specifically, the first flash drive was invented by the Japanese Fuji Masuoka. There were only 5 people in his company.

By the way, the name “flash” was invented by Fuji’s colleague. Erasing information from the media was accompanied by a flash (photoflash from English flash), and this association formed the basis for the name of the new gadget.

The first chip with NAND flash memory appeared in 1989. It had a high layout density, thanks to which microcircuits of impressive volumes were created. In 1994-1996 it was created and The first USB interface standard was developed.

In the late 1990s, a need arose to create a storage device that would surpass floppy disks in capacity and reliability. Iomega Zip drives never became a standard. High price and low reliability were miniature hard drives Microdrive. Over time, compact discs, which made it possible to store large volume information has been replaced by flexible storage devices magnetic disks, but to read them you needed an optical drive.

As a result, drives connected via USB interface with NAND flash memory. Card reader or additional drive these drives were not needed. Thus, they won the championship among storage devices. Compact, with large volume, various designs, now everyone has them like mobile phones.

The first USB flash drives (or simply flash drives) appeared in 2000. They were invented by employees of the Israeli company M-Systems Amir Banom, Dov Moran and Oran Ogdan. In April 1999, a patent for a flash drive was registered in the United States, and in September 2000 the drive itself was presented. The flash drive was called DiskOnKey, in the USA it was sold jointly with IBM and carried the logo of the American corporations. The first flash drive had 8 MB of memory and cost $50; by the end of the year, models with 16 MB and 32 MB ($100) were released.

At the same time, the Singaporean company Trek Technology presented its development, repeating the patent from M-Systems. They presented their brainchild ThumbDrive with a capacity of 8 MB in February 2000 at the CeBIT exhibition in Germany. Trek Technology was able to prove its superiority in Singapore, but lost claims filed in other countries.

Every year flash drives become more and more capacious. Their design is also changing. If a few years ago it was possible to purchase a standard type of drive (a rectangular box 2-3 cm long with a predominantly plastic body), today the range is simply amazing. Flash drives with casings made of wood, silicone, metal, leather and even are on sale.

And that's not to mention the form. There is certainly room for imagination - in the form of animals, cards,

The history of the USB flash drive began in Japan in 1984, when Toshiba invented semiconductor reprogrammable flash memory. Specifically, the first flash drive was invented by the Japanese Fuji Masuoka. There were only 5 people in his company. By the way, the name “flash” was invented by Fuji’s colleague. Erasing information from the media was accompanied by a flash (photoflash from English flash), and this association formed the basis for the name of the new gadget. The first chip with NAND flash memory appeared in 1989. It had a high packaging density, thanks to which microcircuits of impressive volumes were created. In 1994-1996, the first USB interface standard was created and developed.

In the late 1990s, a need arose to create a storage device that would surpass floppy disks in capacity and reliability. Iomega Zip drives never became a standard. Miniature Microdrive hard drives were high in price and low in reliability. Over time, CDs, which made it possible to store large amounts of information, replaced drives on flexible magnetic boards, but an optical drive was needed to read them. As a result, drives connected via a USB interface with NAND flash memory were recognized as the most popular way to store and transfer information. These drives did not need a card reader or an additional drive. Thus, they took first place among storage devices. Compact, with large volume, various designs, they are now like mobile phones Everyone has it.

The patent for the flash drive was registered in April 1999, and the flash drive itself appeared in 2000 and was called DiskOnKey. It was invented by employees of the Israeli company M-Sistems. In the USA, this flash drive was sold jointly with IBM and bore the logo of the American corporation on the body. The first flash drive had a memory capacity of 8 GB and cost $50. Over time, flash drives of 16 and 32 GB came out and they cost $100. But there was one more development. Trek Technology (Singapore) has created its own flash drive, repeating the M-Sistems patent. This flash drive was called ThumbDrive, its capacity was 8 GB and it was presented in February 2000 in Germany.

The history of the development of the flash drive is very fascinating. This gadget is constantly in a state of evolution: the amount of memory increases, the size of the device decreases. These drives are compact and spacious. All operations performed with them occur as quickly as possible and save our precious time. Moreover, a flash drive can be used as an original accessory, and this is so important in our time when everyone wants to stand out.

2) Work. I could only do video editing for 2 hours after work, which significantly increased the achievement of the final result. I cannot remove this factor. But I hope that I can adapt :)

The original version of the video was supposed to be almost 9 minutes long and contain much more facts and details, but I decided to cut it down so as not to overload the video with insignificant facts. Although the text of the original version has been preserved, and I will give it below.

The history of the creation of a flash drive.

It appeared on the market in 2000, and after 5 years, one of the oldest magazines about computer technologies PC World, ranked best gadgets created over the past 50 years, awarded it 9th place. By placing a Polaroid between the camera and the transistor radio. It comes in various shapes and sizes. Some of which become separate topics for discussion. Sometimes people keep many amazing stories on it. But this inconspicuous gadget has its own interesting history.

The work of Professor Masuoka.

The history of the creation of a flash drive begins in the 70s, in Japan. Professor Fusio Masuoka works at Toshiba on the development of dynamic random access memory.
After several years of painstaking work, he manages to make a small breakthrough in this direction and create a device with a fantastic capacity of 1 megabyte for those years. But in his invention, the professor sees one obvious drawback. The fact is that when the power is turned off, all previously recorded information is lost forever. Then, Masuoka is thinking about creating a non-volatile matrix that would correct this drawback, and thereby open up new horizons in the field of information storage.
Toshiba management did not share the professor’s optimism, and ultimately refused to support the development similar device. But Professor Masuoka was not going to give up the idea that captured him. He independently devotes all his time to the development of a non-volatile storage medium free time. Working on it on weekends and at night. And as a result, in 1980 he patented flash memory of the NOR type. (Not Or - in Boolean mathematics, the negation of the value or).
The name Flash itself was invented by the professor’s colleague, Shoji Arizumi. The process of recording information seemed to him similar to the flash of a camera. Flash in English is flash.

The principle of operation of a flash drive.

To understand the basics of how flash memory works, you need to remember binary system Reckoning Those same zeros and ones. Flash memory is a matrix consisting of millions of cells. One cell is 1 bit. And an array of 8 such cells is 1 byte. If there is a charge in the cell, then it is one; if, accordingly, there is no charge, then it is zero. Various combinations of zeros and ones in one byte allow the reading device to determine which character, letter, or number is written in a particular array.

Let's, for clarity, look at a drawing of a cat and his binary code, written in the column on the left.
The microcontroller reads information one by one from each array of 1 byte. If there is a charge in the flash memory cells, that is, 1, then it sends a signal and a pixel is displayed on the monitor. If there is no charge, that is, zero, then the field remains empty. Thus, we have a picture of our object. I guess you could call it high-tech cross stitch.

How Intel released the world's first flash chip.

Professor Masuoka talks about his invention at one of the scientific conferences held in the USA in 1984. American companies involved in the creation of semiconductors immediately realize the danger to their leadership in the industry that the invention of a Japanese professor poses. While Toshiba is just surprised by the request Intel Please kindly provide some samples of this new flash memory for study. And the funny thing is, Toshiba makes several samples and gives them to Intel.
Having received the samples, Intel immediately employs 300 employees to develop its own analogue of flash memory. While Toshiba is thinking, and maybe really, that it is possible to get some kind of commercial interest in this, and is allocating 5 engineers to help Professor Masuoka.
As a result, in 1988, Intel released the first commercial flash chip of the Nor type. And Masuoka improved his invention, and in 1989 Toshiba announced flash Nand memory type, which, by the way, is used in almost all modern flash drives. Subsequently, Masuoka left the company, and in 1992, he sued Toshiba for compensation for his invention in the amount of almost $1 million.
But the story of creating a flash drive does not end there. For now, it's just a wheel, but not a whole bike yet. It is used as an element in microcircuits of other devices, such as cameras and computers. Independent device, which will displace 3.5-inch floppy disks from the market, the flash drive will become available in Israel.

The Story of Dov Moran.

After graduating from a technical university and 6 years of service in the microprocessor development department of the Israeli Navy, the young inventor Dom Moran created the company M-Systems in 1989. He is interested in flash memory that has just appeared on the market, and the idea arises of creating a external storage information.
It takes M-Systems several years to create software, which would allow the computer to contact the flash memory as an external storage device. In 1995, the development was successful and M-Sistems received a US patent for its DiskOnChip invention.
In the same year, 95, appears USB port specifications 1.0 Computers from the world's leading manufacturers are beginning to be equipped with it. Then, Dov Moran's companion, programmer Amir Ban, suggests using new interface in a joint invention, and not create a separate one as was implemented by others external media information - 3.5 inch floppy disks and compact disks.
From now on, creation USB flash drives, enters the finish line. But another 4 years are spent on finalizing the invention, creating the final commercial product and production base.
In April 1999, M-Sistems patented a USB flash drive. And already in September 2000, sales of the world's first flash drive, called DiskOnKey, began. The first flash drive was quite expensive - $50. For comparison, one 3.5-inch floppy disk cost 100 times cheaper, only 50 cents. At the same time, the new media exceeded the same floppy disk in capacity by only 5 times. The capacity of the first flash drive was 8 megabytes. But still, it was a real breakthrough in the field of external storage media. After all, after a couple of months, a 32 megabyte USB flash drive costing $100 appeared on the market.

Track technology and its product.

It’s worth saying that M-Sistems was not the only company that was creating USB flash memory. In the same year 2000, the Singaporean company Trek Technologi presented its own identical development called ThubDrive. But this company was able to prove the right of primacy in creating a USB flash drive only in its native Singapore. In all other countries, the lawsuits filed were lost.

Review of the flash memory market.

Every year the production of flash drives is improving. Media are becoming more compact, and the volume of information stored on them is increasing. Every year, between 40 and 60 billion gigabytes of flash memory are produced. The total market size already exceeds $25 billion per year.
The largest flash drive created today is a product from Vion Corporation called Hyper Stor 6200, which appeared back in 2009. This device was intended for corporations and had a memory capacity of 100 terabytes. Its cost was not disclosed, but according to experts it could be tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The future of flash drives.
As for the age-old problem of confusion that arises when you insert a flash drive and cannot understand whether you are inserting it on the wrong side, a clearing has appeared here. Almost 20 years after the creation of the first USB interface, computer manufacturers began to think about this problem. In 2013, a symmetrical 3.1 specification connector appeared, allowing connection from either side. By the way, there are already transitional types of flash drives on sale that are suitable for old and new usb standard.
Today, flash drives have practically no competitors among other storage media. They are durable, capable of operating at temperatures from -30 to +80 degrees Celsius, and storing enormous amounts of information. It's hard to even imagine what it would look like modern world, without the invention of Fujio Masuoka. But the most interesting thing is to look at the world of the future, when flash memory will be replaced by even more compact storage media based on DNA molecules, quantum dots and other microparticles.

At the dawn of the computer era permanent memory were not equipped at all. They were used only to perform calculations, being, by and large, only complex calculators. Instructions for computers in the mid-20th century were given in the form of a code stamped on punched cards. Then came magnetic tapes, which soon became rewritable.

These were prototypes of modern hard drives, which are also magnetic media and also contain moving parts. New era in electronics seemed to begin with the advent optical disks– after all, they were based on a fundamentally new recording method.

However, the age of DVD was short-lived; Already at the beginning of the third millennium, flash media began to advance, and today optical disks have only a cinematic niche left. And even then only because of the abundance of old video players; If DVD players were not in every second home, perhaps today films would already be sold on small “disposable” flash chips.

In any case, now flash drives are data carriers with which nothing can compete in terms of popularity. Their principle of operation, as well as the principle of operation optical disk, has nothing to do with the magnetic recording technologies used in hard drives.

History of the creation of flash memory

Instead, a flash drive is based on the ability of transistors to change and maintain their charge under the influence of an applied external potential. Transistor known since the 60s for a long time was too large, capricious and expensive a device to be used as a storage medium; but already in the 80s engineers Tochiba - Fujio Masuokoi and Shoji Ariizumi figured out how to place on a relatively compact matrix large number rewritable transistors. In 1984 at the International Exhibition electronic devices The first working prototype of a flash drive was presented in San Francisco. Another six years passed, Intel brought the concept to fruition and brought flash drives to the market. And... nothing happened. Flash drives have not conquered the world. There were still ten years left before their triumph, which for the most part passed under the sign of the optical disk.
What was the reason for the failure? Expensive, of course. Flash memory was expensive and inconvenient; it was installed only in military aircraft - where it was non-volatile, but vulnerable to mechanical vibrations magnetic hard drives proved to be insufficiently reliable. But flash drives were excellent for military purposes: not only did writing and reading occur without moving the disks or heads, but erasing was also instantaneous and irreversible. According to the widespread version, it is precisely for such rapid erasing - reminiscent of a photo flash - that the technology received the name “flash”. This was very convenient for the military, who preferred that information not fall into the wrong hands.

History of the creation of a USB flash drive

In short, for ten years - until Israeli scientists Dov Moran and Amir Ban got down to business - flash drives remained exotic. However, Israeli engineers did what the venerable Silicon Valley manufacturers could not do: they reduced the cost and minimized flash chips. Dov Moran came up with the idea of ​​a flash drive as a product, and Amir Ban guessed to use it as a USB device. And starting in 2000, flash drives became available to the average user. The market pioneer was IBM, working in collaboration with M-Systems. It was in this company that Moran and Ban worked.

The modern assortment of USB flash drives is comparable to the assortment of sweets at an oriental bazaar: all colors, all sizes, many “seasonings” accessories and additional functions. There are waterproof flash drives and flash drives the size of a child’s fingernail, there are designer flash drives and special drives with hardware encryption, a fingerprint scanner and a function for automatically erasing data if unauthorized access is attempted - direct descendants of military on-board flash drives.

However, flash drives have not fundamentally changed in more than thirty years. This is still the same array of transistors with a controller, and the difference in production technologies is understandable only to radio engineers. However, a modern 256 GB flash drive is radically different from the one released in 2000 and had a capacity of 8 MB.

And while flash media continues to develop by leaps and bounds, nothing will dislodge them from users’ pockets and desk drawers in the end; another successful technology - magnetic recording - has happily existed for more than half a century.

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