The design and system aspects of the HD file drum
Harrison W. Fuller, S. P. Woodsum, R. R. Evans · 1958
The HD File Drum was developed by the Computer Products Division of Laboratory for Electronics, Inc., to meet the ever-growing demands for fast, inexpensive and large-capacity random access memories. The initial application of the HD File Drum was its use in a multidrum file in the DIANA system, which is a general-purpose business machine designed and built by Laboratory for Electronics, Inc. The File Drum is now finding application in various computer systems that require the reliability and rapid random access that it affords. The ability to form arbitrarily large multidrum files without effecting the random access time is frequently valuable. The self-clocked reading method, moreover, allows the use of wholly variable word and block organization.