physical object
Identifier
2010.1.26
Description
NEC Delay Line (circa 1969).This is an Analog delay line known as a Magnetostrictive Delay Line. These storage devices use magnetostriction to create a delay in an electrical data signal passed data down the coiled wire before feeding the output back as input in a recirculating loop. The capacity thus depends on the length of the wire. Models like this one were used in the 1960s and probably had a storage capacity of a few kilobytes or less.
Delay lines were used on early digital computers, but instead of a electrical signal passed down a wire, a tube filled with mercury was used and an acoustic signal was passed down the tube. The delay line storage on the UNIVAC I, one of the first commercial computers, had a capacity of about 1.5KB.
Magnetostrictive delay lines, as seen here,
Related Term
Storage Devices (describes)
External links
WikipediaWikipediaComputer History Museum
