One Gigabyte

Here's an interesting observation from my father:

About 1972 or so, I worked for a company called ISS, which built disc drives. One of the products was called a 7330, (a copy of the IBM 3330), a roughly washing machine size device that stored 30 MB and cost about $50,000.

To store 1 GB of data would require about 30,000 of these drives, and cost about $1.5 billion. They would also completely fill, floor to ceiling, 15 typical houses. Or if you prefer, 5 layers on one football field (about 12 feet high).

I just bought a Kingston USB flash card thingamajig for $80. Smaller than a BIC lighter. 1 GB.