The document summarizes the history and evolution of removable storage technologies from paper tape in the 1700s to modern USB thumb drives. It describes early technologies like punched cards, cassette tapes, floppy disks of various sizes, portable hard drives, Zip drives, and optical discs. Key points included the increasing storage capacities over time, from kilobytes to megabytes to gigabytes, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each technology as newer options emerged.

1. Removable Storage: From Paper Tape to Thumb Drives and Beyond A Presentation by Joel May

4. Paper Tape

9. Punched Cards

13. Cassette Tape

17. 8″ Floppy Disk

21. 5¼″ Floppy Disk

25. 5¼″ Floppy Disk Plastic Disk Paper Sleeve

27. 5¼″ Floppy Disk Oval Cutout

30. 5¼″ Floppy Disk Write-Enable Slot

37. 3½″ Floppy Disk

39. 3½″ Floppy Disk Rigid Case Slideable Write-Protect catch Metal plate slides aside for access to the plastic disk inside

44. Portable Hard Drives

50. Iomega Zip Drive

56. Optical Storage Devices

79. Flash Memory Just a few examples:

82. Flash Memory A card reader built into a desktop computer

83. Flash Memory A card reader built into a photo printer

84. Flash Memory A free-standing card reader that connects via a USB cable

90. USB Thumb Drives

91. USB Thumb Drives

92. USB Thumb Drives

93. USB Thumb Drives

94. USB Thumb Drives

95. USB Thumb Drives

96. USB Thumb Drives

105. PortableApps AntiVirus Package Browser Instant Messaging Microsoft Office Substitute Math Game Calendar Email

107. Some Things You can Do With a USB Thumb Drive Then: Remove the UTD at the end of the session and no record of your session or anything else personal remains on the host computer

114. The End Removable Storage: From Paper Tape to Thumb Drives and Beyond This presentation is available for viewing at www.joelmay.org/presentations