On Jun 13, 6:01 am, David R Brooks wrote:
Stan Barr wrote:
On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:32:49 -0700, TimShoppa
wrote:
What's the bulkiest removable storage media? Drums etc. don't count
because you don't often switch the drum (although they certainly could
be heavy judging by nothing but the size of the bearings). I worked
with RP06 packs and some funky optical tape reels in the past, but
those were pretty measly compared to some others I have seen or heard
about:

An IMAX 3-D reel can be 350 pounds and even the projector room even
has a dedicated forklift for helping load them:
http://www.architectureweek.com/2002...lding_1-2.html

An SSEC "paper tape" reel was punched-card-width stock not cut into
individual cards, sprocket holed and with 78 usable columns, and a
reel of it weighed 400 pounds:
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/ssec-tape.html

Any other bulkier examples I'm missing?

The original BBC steel tape video recorders? Huge reels of thin steel
tape, spliced by welding and grinding!

I forwarded this to a friend who worked at the BBC: this is his reply:

= It sounds like VERA, can't remember whether or not it was steel tape. One
= of these pages just says "magnetic tape"
=
=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERA_videotape_format
=
=http://www.terramedia.co.uk/Chronomedia/years/bbc_vera.htm
=
=http://www.vtoldboys.com/vera2.htm

Working with the figures provided (20" diameter, 1/2" thick) and a
density of steel of 7.8g/cc,I get a weight of 20kg which is like 44
pounds. (Yes, this ignores the weight of the reel itself, but it also
overestimates the weight of the tape because the center of the reel is
not occupied). A bit of a pain to lift up to head-height, but not a
contender compared to 400 pounds!

Tim.