Celebrating 50 Years of Tape Storage

Tape was just the beginning...
Tape has been a part of data storage for so long, it's easy to take it for granted. Yet, it's been 50 years since the first commercially available magnetic tape was pioneered by IBM and 3M. The year was 1952. And the product was the Model 726 tape drive, which used a 12" movie reel to store 1.4 megabytes on a special tape media. It was the first truly removable storage media-a breakthrough that ushered in a new era of information processing.

Now it's 2003. Tape is a core part of every organization's storage infrastructure. Bulky tape reels have become hand-sized cartridges of half-inch tape that each can hold hundreds of gigabytes, often handled by automated libraries. Tape has been joined by a variety of removable media formats that help businesses and consumers save, preserve and share digital information-including magnetic floppy diskettes and optical CD and DVD discs.

And that 3M storage division? We became an independent business-Imation Corp.-in 1996. Today, Imation is using its unique blend of expert magnetic media and systems design, manufacturing excellence, and in-depth experience to help drive makers develop storage platforms for tomorrow's business networks and consumer devices.

Imation delivers to the global marketplace the most comprehensive portfolio of optical media, floppy diskettes, and tape cartridges for desktop, network, and data center applications:

Enterprise Storage Products
Black Watch™ Half-Inch Tape Cartridges
Royal Guard™ Half-Inch Tape Cartridges

Mid-Range Storage Products
Black Watch DLTtape™ Cartridges
Black Watch DLTtape IV Cartridges
Black Watch Super DLTtape™ I Cartridges
Black Watch Ultrium™ Tape Cartridges

Entry-Level Storage Products
Travan™ Data Cartridges
SLR Data Cartridges
5.25" Data Cartridges
4mm Data Cartridges
8mm Data Cartridges
Mammoth 8mm Data Cartridges
AIT-2 and AIT-3 (Advanced Intelligent Tape™) Data Cartridges

Personal Storage Products
Diskettes
Dictating Cassettes
Magneto-Optical Disks
Full range of CD Media
Full range of DVD Media
CDRW Drive
Portable Harddisk
FlashGO!

Breakthroughs to come
From the Model 726 tape drive in 1952 to today's 1/2" tape cartridges, the demand keeps growing: handle more data, reduce costs, create faster access, and make everything more secure, reliable, compatible and portable. It will be terabyte and multi-terabyte tape cartridges and the revolutionary promise of holographic storage.
Imation was there to dream that digital information could be stored on magnetic tape instead of paper punch cards. Now you can crunch data, move the results from computer to computer, and secure them for later use. Removable media made the information revolution possible.
And the information revolution continues.
Imation has 50 years of experience in meeting expanding data storage needs. From working with leading tape drive makers to develop tape from reel-to-reel through today's advanced cartridges, and the playing a key role in making the first U.S.-manufactured optical disks through the latest recordable and rewriteable optical platforms. Imation was there. And Imation will be there...tomorrow, the next 50 years, and beyond.
The future of storage is virtually limitless. Imation will put it in your hands.