Hutchinson Technology

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Hutchinson Technology Headquarters in Hutchinson, Minnesota 2012-0814-HutchinsonTech.jpg
Hutchinson Technology Headquarters in Hutchinson, Minnesota
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TDK in Eau Claire

Hutchinson Technology is an engineering company established and headquartered in Minnesota, United States, specializing in the design and manufacture of precision technologies. Hutchinson's primary products are suspension assemblies that hold magnetic read-write heads at microscopic distances above the disks in rigid disk drives.

Contents

History

Hutchinson Technology was founded in 1965 by Jon Geiss and Jeffrey Greene, initially to produce gyroscope components for missiles. It subsequently supplied printed circuit boards to Minnesota's two largest computer companies, Univac and Control Data. With contracts from Control Data and IBM in the 1970s, it developed specialized mechanisms that precisely position the read-write heads for magnetic disk drives. The company grew to employ 3,000 people (2001-2010). [1]

On November 2, 2015 Japanese electronics company TDK announced plans to purchase Hutchinson Technology for $126 million. [2]

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disk storage</span> General category of storage mechanisms

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hard disk drive</span> Electro-mechanical data storage device

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tape drive</span> Data storage device

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnetic storage</span> Recording of data on a magnetizable medium

Magnetic storage or magnetic recording is the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetisation in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is accessed using one or more read/write heads.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of hard disk drives</span> Development of computer data storage

In 1953, IBM recognized the immediate application for what it termed a "Random Access File" having high capacity and rapid random access at a relatively low cost. After considering technologies such as wire matrices, rod arrays, drums, drum arrays, etc., the engineers at IBM's San Jose California laboratory invented the hard disk drive. The disk drive created a new level in the computer data hierarchy, then termed Random Access Storage but today known as secondary storage, less expensive and slower than main memory but faster and more expensive than tape drives.

Magnetic-tape data storage is a system for storing digital information on magnetic tape using digital recording.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floppy disk variants</span> Types of floppy disk formats

The floppy disk is a data storage and transfer medium that was ubiquitous from the mid-1970s well into the 2000s. Besides the 3½-inch and 5¼-inch formats used in IBM PC compatible systems, or the 8-inch format that preceded them, many proprietary floppy disk formats were developed, either using a different disk design or special layout and encoding methods for the data held on the disk.

References

  1. Thomas J. Misa, Digital State: The Story of Minnesota's Computing Industry (University of Minnesota Press 2013
  2. TDK to buy Hutchinson Technology for $126 million