Why is a database always represented with a cylinder? [closed]

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2822650

Question

This question came up today and I couldn't find any historical answer as to why a database is always represented as a cylinder. I am hoping someone in the stack world would know why and have a link or something backing it up.

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Solution

I'm reasonably certain that it predates disk drives, and goes back to a considerably older technology: drum memory:

Drum Memory

Another possibility (or maybe the choice was based on both) is a still older technology: mercury tank memory:

Mercury tank

You may have seen the symbol oriented horizontally instead of vertically, but horizontal drums were common as well:

Multiple horizontal drums

OTHER TIPS

You asked for more pics. I took these at the computer history museum in Mountain View, CA in May 2016. enter image description here Description for the above image says:

UNIVAC I mercury memory tank, Remington Rand, US, 1951

For memory, the UNIVAC used seven mercury delay line tanks. Eighteen pairs of crystal transducers in each tank transmitted and received data as waves in mercury held at a constant 149°F

Gift of William Agee X976.89

enter image description here Description for the above image says:

Williams-Kilburn tube - Manchester Mark I, Manchester University, UK, ca 1950

This was the memory in the Manchester Mark I, the successor to the "Baby." It stored only 128 40-bit words. Each bit was an electric charge that created a spot of light on the face of a "TV tube."

Gift of Manchester University Computer Science Department, X67.82

It's because people view a DB as simple storage, much like a disk. And disk storage has always been represented by a cylinder due to, well, the physical properties of spinning magnetic disks.

It comes from the olden days (pre 1960) when data was analog, i.e. round. Nowadays with digital (square) data, databases aren't cylindrical but unfortunately the convention has stuck.

I always assumed it stood for the round edges of a hard drive platter. The average consumer might not have necessarily known what a Physical Hard Drive Component looked like, so it was represented as a cylinder.

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