Megabytes used to weigh hundreds of pounds.

 

Megabytes used to weigh hundreds of pounds.

More specifically, 5 megabytes of data weighed one ton.

In 1956, the first computer had something similar to a hard drive.

At the time, it was a huge leap in storage capabilities, but the cabinet that contained the hard drive weighed over 2,200 pounds and could hold 5 MBs of data

When talking about weight, the subject is most often physical things. Such as a person’s weight or maybe the weight of a new supercar. But have you ever wondered what data weighs? We give you the answer to that and tell you what the entire Internet weighs.

There is data in everything you read, watch, download or upload online. All these things can be measured. Depending on their size, they are measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes or even terabytes..

Even though you can’t feel the weight of electronic data, it does have a very, very small weight. The Internet runs on electrons and this is also how data is stored. As an example, a normal e-mail of 50 kb requires approx. 8 billion electrons. Because we know how much a single electron weighs, we can calculate the weight of data.