JargonFile/entries/Winchester.txt
2014-04-26 16:54:15 +01:00

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Winchester
n. Informal generic term for sealed-enclosure magnetic-disk drives in which
the read-write head planes over the disk surface on an air cushion. There is
a legend that the name arose because the original 1973 engineering prototype
for what later became the IBM 3340 featured two 30-megabyte volumes; 30--30
became Winchester when somebody noticed the similarity to the common term
for a famous Winchester rifle (in the latter, the first 30 referred to
caliber and the second to the grain weight of the charge). (It is sometimes
incorrectly claimed that Winchester was the laboratory in which the
technology was developed.