It wasn't that long ago we'd turn from our computer screens to a colleague, looking for a floppy disk, so we could share a document with them.

Forgetting the advent of email as a mass communication tool, I took a moment recently to consider just how far we really have come when it comes to electronic storage.

The most common floppy disk (3 ½ inch) carried a maximum of 1.44Mb of data.  These days there wouldn't be too many files we create that would still fit on that disk given the amount of images and multi-media embedded into documents.

Consider this. You can now buy a piece of plastic and metal (not dissimilar in fact to the floppies except without the moving parts) smaller than the average postage stamp.  This tiny little thing can store a massive 16Gigabytes of data (and that number is growing).

For the uninitiated, one Gigabyte (Gb) is 1,024 Megabytes (Mb) or thereabouts.

So, stacked side by side, how would this compare?

That one little postage stamp would hold around the same amount of data as 11,378 floppy disks.  Next time you are in the city, stand next to one of those magnificent multi-story buildings; count 7 sets of windows up.  Now imagine a big pile of floppy disks, one on top of the other.  And I don't mean three and a half inches high each, standing flimsily on their 2mm edge.  I mean stacked as you would on your desk, lying flat, one on top of the other.  11,378 floppy disks would stack around 7 stories high.  And you can now fit all that information into something the size of your thumb!

To put it another way, in this day of iPod's and Mp3 players, we seem to measure storage capacity by 'songs'.  Thankfully no one has challenged this measure, because it is inherently flawed because of the varied length of songs and thus their file size. However, for the purposes of this example, imagine a three and a half minute song, probably around 4.2Mb in file size.  A 1Gb music player would hold 240 songs. 

A floppy disk would hold around 1 minute and 10 seconds of just one song.  That is if it could store just part of the song!

That's more songs than most of us would ever have owned, let alone listened to.

The good old LP or 33 would hold around 14 songs give or take.  That makes that big round bit of plastic a 59Mb storage medium.  Not bad really for it's day.

There is no point to all these calculations other than to re-enforce to you how lucky we are, and how far we have come.  Technology will continue to astound us all at every turn; we can only imagine what might be to come.