Believe it or not, it has been 35 years since the very first solid-state drive (aka solid-state disk) hit the market. Like all SSDs, that model was designed to appear to a computer like a traditional rotating disk, while storing and retrieving data far faster than traditional hard drives could. Such devices are called "solid-state" because they contain no moving parts, only memory chips.

Over the years, the computer industry's quest for faster, cheaper, higher-capacity SSDs has driven storage technology in ways no one could have foreseen in 1976, including the use of SSDs as the primary storage component in some consumer PCs.

In the next 15 slides, you'll witness the evolution of the solid-state drive, from a bulky, obscenely expensive server accessory to a tiny consumer box (with hundreds of gigabytes of capacity) that anyone can buy for $50.