News Bayeux Tapestry tech specs calculated

2.429MB recorded in ten years, at a write-speed of 2.16 bytes per hour.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2011/03/28/bayeux-tapestry-capacity-read-and-write-spe/1

 

There are no other ways of long term data storage.

I mean how may people here can still retrieve data from a 3.5" floppy let alone a 5.25"

or how many of us still have a working VHS player let alone a Betamax unit?

unless the data storage medium has a way of projecting the information visually, paper in it's multitude of forms is the only way to store long term.

Ipads, Kindles may stand the test of time ,but will you still be able to power up the unit in 5 years let alone 900 years time?

 

You could do something on the same material, but use a GIANT (or an array of many) QR codes, that would hold allot of data and could have a significantly faster read and write time The down side being instead of a tape player guiding you through you'd need something that can still scan QR codes in 500 years time... I get the feeling people will have noooo idea what one it by then

 

just one question comes to mind..... WHY?????

Next bulletin... Computers today are FASTER than computers from 20 years ago?

Please

 

On fault here is that there are multiple interpritations... While we "know" the history of the battle, the story of the shroud may have encompassed multiple versions...

 

That would be me.

Me again!

Along with a 78 record player, an 8-track tape player (to be fair, I don't know if this one still works) and cassette decks.

Agreed. That or the system of passing knowledge down by word of mouth. No, I don't mean in the rumour-monger manner, but that tribal system of it's one persons job to remember all the tribal history.

Well, you could encode information in the DNA of an organism with very efficient error-checking systems. Provided the organism can reproduce, of course.

Doubt it. Electronics isn't designed to last forever. Look at SSDs - every time they process shrink their expected lifespan drops like a rock.

 

Seriously? I know it was semi-tounge in cheek, but seriously? I hope this wasn't an amusing attempt at claiming how slow data creation was back then. Cause I got news, monk copiests could probably manage more like 30-50 bytes per minute or 1.8-3KB/hr. Figure 5-8 words per minutes with an average length of 6 letters, 1 byte per letter. Honestly, a fast writer can probably manage faster than that (my handwritting isn't all that speedy, but I can type about 50wpm )

 

It's good at long term data storage but..... Can it run Crysis?

 

According to that gentleman Stephen Fry and the QI team its an Embroidery not a tapestry?

 

Erm, what? For a stat, the Bayeux Tapestry is picture based, not words. And secondly: it's an amusing piece of research, done for fun. I don't think they're trying to make a point about data storage speeds in the 11th century.

Because that's stupid.

 

The difference with modern data storage techniques is that the data isn't locked to any one device. You can readily retrieve and transfer the data before the medium it's currently stored on goes out of date. So while yes, your iPad or Kindle will fail in just a couple decades, your data doesn't have to go down with it.

 

Have The Register contacted the museum where it's kept so they can add it to the tour guides' information? It's an amusing bit of information to keep in one's own long-term storage.

No, but it shows a good depiction of the Crysis alpha, tried IRL nearly a thousand years ago

 

That is true as long as the data is transfered to another medium before the current version goes out of date.

That is a big ask, you may backup your own data from one medium to another over your own life, but who is to say will continue that one after your life time?

 

I think we're forgetting the advanced specs here. For example, since more than one person worked on the tapestry at the same time, it was effectively a multithreaded application.



Sorry. I'll get my coat

 

That's (the popular misinterpretation of) Moore's law out the window then. If they could do 2.16 bytes/hr (.0006 bytes/s = 6x10^-10 MB/s) 934 years ago, then a doubling of power every 18 months would put us at 2^622 times as fast as that now, which is 10^178 MB/s, that's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 MB/s. Just a tiny fraction more than the 300 or so MB/s we can manage with modern SSDs.

 

I'll put that number in perspective - given there are believed to be around 10^80 atoms in the universe, 10^178 MB is enough to write a million million terabytes of data about every atom in the universe onto every atom in the universe. And (ignoring the problems with lightspeed and the finite lower limit on information quanta) if data write speed had doubled every 18 months since the Bayeux Tapestry was produced, we'd be able to do that IN ONE SECOND.

 

With the one minor problem that Gordon Moore didn't come up with his law until 888 years after the tapestry was completed...

 

Well yes, that and the fact that I'm facetiously referring to the misinterpretation of the law as predicting a doubling of power (or in this case data transfer rate), whereas in fact it refers to transistor density on integrated circuits, which weren't invented until 872 years after the tapestry

 

I second this comment!