44 Years Ago, in Computing

Computers have changed a lot in the last several decades, but I think the intended audience for their documentation has changed a lot more:

As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector…. Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge of the hyper-cube.

Imagine a world in which “I know, I’ll compare this to a 4-dimensional hypercube” is a reasonable thought.

¹ Note that “4-27” is the twenty-seventh page of chapter four, not a range. I wouldn’t have numbered the pages that way—but then my go-to analogy also wouldn’t be “four dimensional hyper-cube,” I guess.)