https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/ramac/ https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/ramac/ Before RAMAC, information had to be entered

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/ramac/ https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/ramac/ Before RAMAC, information had to be entered by running a stack of cards through a punched card machine, and answers would arrive in hours or days. RAMAC could find data in seconds, alter it, and move on to find a completely different piece of data. It let enterprises think about data in new ways, mixing and matching it on the fly. Random access made the relational database possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database#1960s,_navigational_DBMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database#1960s,_navigational_D... The introduction of the term database coincided with the availability of direct-access storage (disks and drums) from the mid-1960s onwards. The term represented a contrast with the tape-based systems of the past, allowing shared interactive use rather than daily batch processing.