An Idea Ahead of Its Time : Jacob Rabinow

The policy of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) was that inventions made as part of an employee’s job belonged to the government. They were free to everybody in the United States. Foreign rights, however, were left to the inventor. After inventing the world’s first magnetic disc computer memory at NBS, Rabinow applied for and received several patents in foreign countries. He then sold the world’s rights outside the Unites States to Remington-Rand for $15,000, which, at that time, he considered a good deal of money. Remington-Rand never used the patent. In 1957, IBM, who had previously showed interest in Rabinow’s invention, came out with a machine called the RAMAC that used a disc memory system. The discs, however, were spaced so that the recording and reading heads could move between them. RAMAC was successful and started the trend toward disc recording.

Objects:
Notched-Disc Magnetic Memory Device, ca. 1951
Replica Disc From First Computer File