400GB MicroSD Memory Card
Motorola Solutions
2005~.
The first small storage format for computer data was the 8-inch floppy disk, available commercially from Memorex in 1972. It was a flexible, magnetically-coated plastic disk that could hold 243 kilobytes of data, the equivalent of 70 one-page Microsoft Word documents or one book in EPUB format.
Four years later, the 5 1/4-inch floppy disk was introduced, a much more durable format that could store 1.2 megabytes of data. This was followed by the 3 1/2-inch disk, a faster, more compact format developed by Sony in 1982. Capacity was slightly higher at 1.44 MB.
Fast forward to 2005. Motorola developed the MicroSD, a Secure Digital flash memory card that could fit in newer, smaller cellphones or in card readers when using an adapter. Capacity and access speed dramatically increased over the following years, reaching 1 terabyte as of this writing. Today, one can store the equivalent of 4,000,000 1972-era 8-inch floppy disks.
The specimen acquired by the museum is a 400-gigabyte MicroSD card, upon which is stored over 40,000 books, manuals, and references, 2,500 lectures, 10 training programs, and 50 full-length motion pictures. The contents are equivalent to that of a medium-sized public library.