[Coco] Totally OT: Terabit memory device

[Dave Kelly]

Bootstrap Bill wrote:

>Back in 1991 or 1992, I read an article in the Orange County Register
>(California) about a new memory device that was being developed by a chemist
>at UCI.  It was about the size of a sugar cube and had no moving parts,
>somehow using a mesh of lasers to read and write. Storage capacity was about
>a terabit. The access speed was comparable to RAM at the time. The article
>went on to say it would take about a decade to get it to market. The ten
>year mark was passed a couple years ago.
>
>Has anyone heard anything about it? Are they ready to test it?
>  
>
I remember that. The article took up the major portion of a page in the 
Houston Chronicle.
Did not realize it had been that long.

That idea was also the basis of a sci-fi short story about 20 years 
before that. As I remember the story
memory storage has outstripped data production and they had managed to 
get all data, past and present,
stored on 1 sugar cube size device and true to the nature of man, lost 
the access key.