Since my first hard drive (for the NorthStar Horizon) in 1983, hard drive prices have dropped one-million-fold. That's not a guess, it's a calculation based on the $1,000 I paid then for 20 megabytes vs. the $100 you pay now for 2 TB.
Has there been any (non-electronic) good in human history whose cost has dropped a million-fold? Maybe aluminum.
Scrapmentaljunkie.com says:"in 1883 aluminium was round $545 per pound. Accounting for inflation, that means aluminium cost $12,000 per pound. Less than 20 years later, aluminium cost 32 cents per pound. This incredible change came about in northern Ohio in 1883. Charles Martin Hall, a student at Obertin College was told by his professor that if anybody "could commercially extract aluminium they would be sure of a fortune!" With that Charles Martin Hall set out to discover to refining alumina (aluminum oxide), a method still used to this day."
While some systems were using 8" floppies, Northstar was pioneering the 5 1/4. I had *dual* 5 1/4 floppies in 1980. Talk about power!
And I just missed it. Couldn't afford what a computer cost at that time, so I skipped the Kaypro etc. generation. (8" floppies, right ? Just like our ICBM silos are still using.) Kept on writing with an electric typewriter for a few more years, finally getting on board with computers when Zenith came out with theirversion of the XT. (That wasn't cheap either, in 1980s dollar terms.) Jordan -------------------------------------------- On Wed, 5/14/14, Harry Binswanger <hb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Subject: Re: OT: In Praise of Dos-Based Word Processors To: xywrite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2014, 9:50 PM I miss CP/M. > Wordstar on DOS? I thought the CP/M version was better. I don't suppose anyone has done a CP/M emulator ? ? Not that I would ever go back - - XyWrite is a million times better. Oh, those awful italics in early Wordstar, where you always missed the turn-off code! >
