Technology Throwback: A Look at Bubble Memory

Have you ever heard of bubble memory?  If you’re under the age of 40 my guess is you probably haven’t.  But this style of computer memory was all the rage in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  What is bubble memory and what lead to its downfall?  Read on for a little tech history lesson.

Removable bubble memory cartridge

I first heard about bubble memory about 10 years ago while reading Tom Clancy’s “Patriot Games”.  At the time I just assumed it was an outdated term for RAM (or something similar) and that the technology was still around in some form or fashion.  I never took the time to look into what it was, but I never forgot the term.  The information was locked away in my head, waiting for the day I came across the term “bubble memory” again.

This year I started a campaign of re-reading all of Tom Clancy’s books, starting with "Patriot Games".  I was eager to get to the section where they discuss Jack Ryan’s portable computer specs.  The computer used was a “Cambridge Datamaster Model-C Field Computer” with “an MC-68000 microprocessor, and two megabytes of bubble memory”.  He mentions that the bubble memory stores information after the unit is turned off.  Not much information to go off, time to do some research!

It turns out that bubble memory was a type of non-volatile (meaning it doesn’t lose its data when turned off) computer memory that used little magnetized areas (known as bubbles) to hold one bit of data each.  At the time it offered memory density similar to that of hard drives, but had the advantage of having no moving parts.  Even by today’s standards, bubble memory is rather rugged, being able to withstand high temperatures, shock, dust, humidity, and high radiation. There were high hopes for bubble memory, with some even thinking it would take over hard drives as the storage medium of choice.  By the mid 70’s most major electronics companies were working on the technology.  The future looked bright.

Internal bubble memory

Advancements in the early 80’s, however, put an end to bubble memory’s promising future.  New hard disk technology allowed them to be faster, cheaper, and more memory-dense than bubble memory.  The usage of bubble memory came to a screeching halt, and almost all companies discontinued using the technology around 1981.  Its ruggedness and durability allowed it to continue in some niche markets such as military applications, but almost all commercial usage ceased.

References to technology in pop culture almost always end up dating the material years down the road, but sometimes that reference can give you a little lesson on how things were “back in the day”.  I’m glad I took the time to learn something new, and I hope you feel the same way.