I got involved with personal computers back in the early 80's. Those were interesting times. I remember reading magazines like "Byte" and "Compute!", realizing that there was a lot of interesting stuff going on that I really needed to learn about.

Back then I had a Commodore 64 with a 170k (model 1541) disk drive. For me, the diskette of choice was from Elephant Memory Systems. I never had a problem with these disks, and I liked their neat advertisements. These always featured a wise looking elephant with the tagline "Never Forgets".

I don't know a lot about the company Elephant Memory Systems; I just know that their ads remind me of a bygone era, when personal computers were first becoming popular.

This page is my small tribute to Elephant Memory Systems. If you have any interesting artifacts from Elephant Memory Systems, or anything else interesting from the computer industry in the 80's, I'd appreciate you telling me about it. Please send any information/pictures to elephant dash never dash forgets AT emailias DOT com. In case it isn't obvious, my address is obfuscated to minimize spam.


ChangeLog:
19-sep-2005 -- in a bit of self-advertisement, I submitted this page to Boing Boing.
20-jan-2006 -- added a better version of one of the EMS ads (the one from Antic Advertisements), also added a scan of a button I obtained.


The first 6 images on this page are courtesy of Damian Cymbal, who runs a nice EMS Tribute Site as well.

Billiant Orange Box Cover Sticker Front Sleeve
Brilliant Orange Box Cover Sticker Front Sleeve
Back Sleeve Gold Box Cover Diskette Labels
Back Sleeve Gold Box Cover Diskette Labels

The next few images are from things that I've managed to collect over the years.

The first is a poster that I obtained from my local computer store when it went out of business in around 1984. This poster has been decorating the walls in my various living arrangements for 20 years now. The poster itself is pretty beat up. I captured this image with a 3MP digital camera and performed some pretty extensive cleanup with The Gimp.

Elephant In Space

The second image is a bumper sticker that I picked up in 1984. If you see a car zipping by with a copy of this bumper sticker adorning it, that might be me...

Never Forget Bumper Sticker

The CyberDen's Disk Sleeve Archive lists an EMS disk sleeve that I vaguely remember:

Old EMS Floppy Sleeve

The Antic Advertisments Gallery lists a neat old EMS advertisement that I seem to recall seeing in an old computer magazine:

EMS Magazine Ad

Brian Daniels was kind enough to provide me with this old advertisement:

Old EMS Advertisement (2)

If you need to re-order some Elephant Disks, you might need this:

EMS Reorder Sticker

The next images on this page come from a promotional booklet entitled The Secrets of Perfect Memory by A. Wiley Pachyderm:

The Secrets of Perfect Memory booklet

Title Page Computers are
		  the pencils of the information age.  Floppies are
		  the paper.  You are the brains. Memento Mori / Memory can still die even in the
		  computer age.
Title Page You are the brains Memento Mori
A warning to imitators Never Forgotten Elephants on the Moon
A warning to imitators Never Forgotten Elephants on the Moon

I used to have a t-shirt just like this when I was younger:

Elephant Memory Systems T-Shirt

Recently I managed to find this button:

EMS Button
Enjoy!

Note: The names of companies and products mentioned here and/or trademarks, trade names and logos contained here may be the trademarks of their respective owners.


Kevin D. Clark
Last modified: Sat Jan 21 00:14:12 EST 2006