The worst storage mediums of all time

The worst storage mediums of all time

As information and mass-communication have begun to play larger roles in our everyday lives, our storage mediums have had to evolve quickly to keep up with out demands. Papyrus and movable type were huge steps forward in their times, but the 20th century saw massive jumps in data storage. Paper and ink gave way to magnetic tape and various types of disk, and suddenly humanity could store so much more than just the written word. Unfortunately, we’ve also hit some major speed bumps along the way.

The evolution of storage mediums has seen more than its fair share of bad ideas, and today we’re going to be looking at some of those lowlights. The article will focus on storage mediums that were demonstrably problematic, but keep in mind that the scope is limited. I’m not going to compare these mediums against each other as that would serve no real purpose (considering how diverse this line-up is, that would be nigh-on impossible anyway). Rather, we’ll take a walk through history and see which storage solutions were doomed to fail, or at least should have been before they were ever commercialized.

The items on this list are here because they were fundamentally flawed products from a technical, usability, or marketability standpoint. There are more storage mediums in existence than I could ever mention in a single article, but these are the ones that stand out as the biggest disappointments to my modern eyes.

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