Bill Gates throws it back with amusing 1994 'visual demonstration' of how much a CD-ROM can store

It's amazing how far we've come since the boom of technology. Devices like laptops and smartphones that used to be a rarity back in the 90s are now commonly utilized in almost every household. Think of how difficult it must have been back then for technolgy pioneers to explain their breakthroughs to society. The world-renowned businessman, investor and founder of Microsoft Organization, Bill Gates, too had to make some hilarious attempts to help people grasp the concept of some innovative products. One among them was a CD-ROM and this picture shared on Instagram by Gates was how they explained it back then.

"Thirty years ago, we wanted to show just how much information a single CD-ROM could hold. The team decided a visual demonstration was necessary!" the technological pioneer captioned the post. It was a picture of a young Gates, holding a CD in one hand while sitting over two tall stacks of papers with information in them. The stacks were almost as tall as the trees in the woods behind them and the Microsoft founder had to hang on top of the stack using a harness. As per the explanation by Microsoft, this picture was to imply that the palm-sized CD-ROM could hold data constituted in the pages of those hundreds of feet tall stacks of papers. After all, this seemingly risky photograph was worth explaining the 700-megabyte capacity of the CD-ROM.

As per the organization, this photograph "put an unfamiliar number into perspective to help people grasp it." Seeing this incredible picture triggered amusing responses from people on the internet who were amazed by the difference in storage devices then and now. Some couldn't help but reminisce about those days when Gates was the symbol of technological augmentation. "I still remember the school days when for us, the only richest man in the world used to be Bill Gates, end of the list," commented @saumil_gandhi_. "If we are going to pile up all the data that exists today, will we go to Planet Pluto?" joked @muriloalvesdev. "Wow, time flies, it looks like it was yesterday when the CDs were invented," wrote @misperfect54.

Though Gates's photo had a hilarious touch, it was an identity of the tech pioneer's matchless vision and consistent triumph in execution. Speaking of the futuristic conceptions of Bill Gates, a 1995 interview of the innovator explaining why the internet would be the next best thing to David Letterman went viral on YouTube. When Gates spoke about how the internet, which was just spawning at that time, would alter the life course of the entire world and Letterman simply ridiculed the idea.

Even the audience couldn't accept Gates's claim about the power of the internet. Guess who's having the last laugh now! In the video, the tech trailblazer said, "It (the internet) has become a place where people are publishing information so everybody can have their own homepage, companies are there, the latest information - it's wild what's going on. You can send electronic mail to people. It is the big new thing." Letterman continued to take Gates's words lightly by comparing the internet to radio but the innovator simply brushed it off with a laugh only to prove, years later, the inevitable place of the internet in this world.