Computers: Bubbles take on disks: Application advances for bubble memories depend upon increased density and speed, standardization, and support circuitry

Now that magnetic bubble memories are on the market, we can expect a deluge of manufacturer reports on their applications and rosy future. It has already started to drizzle. The drizzle indicates that bubbles are competitive with floppy disks in small systems — 300 kb to 10 Mb of resident storage — and that the rivalry will spread to larger systems in the next decade.