How data was stored and accessed in 1982.

My data

I've used the 8", 5.25" floppy disc and the 3.5" which wasn't 'floppy; the larger one were actually floppy and not rigid, the computer we had for our first automated testing machine was BIG and actually produced a punch tape record as well as a graphical print out (an actual graph) where it took the maximum point of the graph as the result, this is one that could do 12 tests a time on a sample, every sample got all 12 tests even if they only asked for 1, they did increase capacity to 24 tests later. Modern analysers, while much the same size will do around 30 different testss and only the tests that are required, so no wastage of unwanted results and materials used.