Who Invented the Flash Drive?
HISTORY OF THE USB FLASH DRIVE
“USB flash devices have become essential to computer users. Whether they are known as jump drives, thumb drives, or pen drives, they have proven to be a useful tool for storing and moving data.”
HISTORY
The USB flash drive has a very brief history, but it has brought several major advantages since the first USB flash drive entered the market. On the other hand, the origin of USB flash drives has not been without controversy.
The USB drive was created by Dr Fujio Masuoka from Japan, who decided to join Toshiba in 1971. One of the doctor’s helpers proposed the name “flash” because the erasing process of the memory contents reminded him of a camera flash. The product was initially displayed at an international conference in San Francisco. Intel saw the enormous potential of this new discovery right away and released the first commercial NOR-type flash chip in 1988. Compact Flash was eventually based on this sort of flash chip. In 1988, Toshiba introduced NAND flash. It offered quicker erase and write speeds and was cheaper to make since it needed a smaller chip area per cell than the NOR type. IBM released the first 8MB version in 2001 as the product name ‘Memory Key,’ as well as the 16MB version in no time.
Flash drives are very useful for quick backups in medical and other industries and are very convenient to use. They can be placed in the USB port of any machine, for example, in patient backups in clinics.
M-Systems, an Israeli company, is credited with the invention of the USB flash drive. M-Systems workers Amir Ban, Dov Moran, and Oron Ogdan invented the first USB flash drive, which was given a U.S. patent in late 2000.
“The first flash drive in the United States started out at 128 megabytes (MB) and cost roughly $30. They are now commonly purchased and sold in gigabytes (GB) and sell for as little as $10 each.”
CONTROVERSY
While Dov Moran is generally considered as the creator of the USB flash drive, the invention is not without controversy. Since the USB flash drive is a mix of earlier technologies, the development of the technologies that made the USB flash drive possible was shared among different companies. According to Netac Technology’s website, the firm created the first USB flash drive in 1999 and was granted a patent in Singapore in 2007 for data management on USB flash drives. Trek Technology also had patents for the technology, however, the UK Intellectual Property Office determined in 2006 that Trek Technology’s patents were invalid.
“Regardless of who gets credit, it’s amazing to think that they’ve only been there for a little more than a decade!”
Don’t you feel enlightened for having these details? Now, when you use or give away a USB flash drive, you can recall a cool story.
“USB flash devices have become essential to computer users. Whether they are known as jump drives, thumb drives, or pen drives, they have proven to be a useful tool for storing and moving data.”
HISTORY
The USB flash drive has a very brief history, but it has brought several major advantages since the first USB flash drive entered the market. On the other hand, the origin of USB flash drives has not been without controversy.
The USB drive was created by Dr Fujio Masuoka from Japan, who decided to join Toshiba in 1971. One of the doctor’s helpers proposed the name “flash” because the erasing process of the memory contents reminded him of a camera flash. The product was initially displayed at an international conference in San Francisco. Intel saw the enormous potential of this new discovery right away and released the first commercial NOR-type flash chip in 1988. Compact Flash was eventually based on this sort of flash chip. In 1988, Toshiba introduced NAND flash. It offered quicker erase and write speeds and was cheaper to make since it needed a smaller chip area per cell than the NOR type. IBM released the first 8MB version in 2001 as the product name ‘Memory Key,’ as well as the 16MB version in no time.
Flash drives are very useful for quick backups in medical and other industries and are very convenient to use. They can be placed in the USB port of any machine, for example, in patient backups in clinics.
M-Systems, an Israeli company, is credited with the invention of the USB flash drive. M-Systems workers Amir Ban, Dov Moran, and Oron Ogdan invented the first USB flash drive, which was given a U.S. patent in late 2000.
“The first flash drive in the United States started out at 128 megabytes (MB) and cost roughly $30. They are now commonly purchased and sold in gigabytes (GB) and sell for as little as $10 each.”
CONTROVERSY
While Dov Moran is generally considered as the creator of the USB flash drive, the invention is not without controversy. Since the USB flash drive is a mix of earlier technologies, the development of the technologies that made the USB flash drive possible was shared among different companies. According to Netac Technology’s website, the firm created the first USB flash drive in 1999 and was granted a patent in Singapore in 2007 for data management on USB flash drives. Trek Technology also had patents for the technology, however, the UK Intellectual Property Office determined in 2006 that Trek Technology’s patents were invalid.
“Regardless of who gets credit, it’s amazing to think that they’ve only been there for a little more than a decade!”
Don’t you feel enlightened for having these details? Now, when you use or give away a USB flash drive, you can recall a cool story.