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They're installing it as a Flight Data Recorder on that plane
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Respect for International Business Machine (IBM)
Gaurav Arora
http://gaurav-arora.com
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Weren't those called "microprocessors" or something back then? 
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That is crazy man!
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I've heard about "walking" harddrives, as those things' heads (when in sync) would make them move across the floor... tlak about "system is running"
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Whilst working at BT in the 80's we took delivery of what we were told was the first 20Mb drive, it was the size of a desk pedestal and took 4 of us to lift it. we took delivery of another a month or so later as we filled it pretty quickly.
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Reminds me of my first hard drive for the IBM-PC, the Corvus. A huge, loud, expensive device - over $5,000 for 10 MB.
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I started working with them in the mid 1970s. They were about the size of a modern day dishwasher. Had platters - like vinyl records stacked about 5 high. I think they stored 400 MB. They were so big and expensive that peripherals were shared amongst several computers and I worked on a peripheral switch - how to switch hard drives, tape drives, paper tape, etc between computers.
I remember getting an IBM PC with a hard drive for the first time. Probably mid 1980s. 10 MB instead of floppy disks. We thought we had it made.
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Was that the Flight Data Recorder or the Voice Recorder? 
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According to Zeph up near the top of the thread, it is the Flight Recorder 
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Sometime around 1990 I went with a class to tour an IBM facility in San Jose, CA. One of the rooms we visited was full of the 25 MB version of this drive. The customer apparently did not want to upgrade the system ...
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In Apple terminology: it could hold one song
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That appears to be Grace Hopper in the plane.
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I wonder what the largest ever hard drive platter size was. I have one with about a 26" diameter sitting in my garage, salvaged by my dad from decommissioned equipment. He said it had about a 1 MB capacity. I have no idea what it came from.
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I have 2 leads on C# WPF positions with Financial Trading Application companies.
I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who's every worked in a role as a developer in a company like this.
They didn't ask for any prior experience in the industry, but I'm mostly concerned about what prerequisite knowledge I will need going in. Is it math intensive? Do I need a lot of experience with financial calculations?
I know every job/company is different, but I'm looking for some general feedback. Both positions are fairly high paying, so I'd like to find out what they're looking for before I dive too deep in.
Thanks
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Everything that I have read in the news indicates that the financial industry and accountants prefer "creative" math over accurate math.
Just an observation...
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the job listing did not list prerequisite or necessary experience?
If it's only WPF, I assume it will be high level programming (UI...)
I'd rather be phishing!
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You might be working with an existing system/framework. If so, then you will be doing maintenance work and maybe some new enhancements, at first. Being able to show that you can solve problems, quickly and correctly, is paramount.
I use to write software for a financial institution (forbes 500), which will remain nameless.
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Slacker007 wrote: I use to write software for a financial institution (forbes 500), which will remain nameless bankrupt.
FTFY 
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No, they are very far from bankrupt, I assure you. Although, I am sure the anti 1%, wish they were.
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It's ok, Slacker... He was just confusing you with me... Mine went bankrupt, and though I won't identify them, pretty much everyone would recognize the name.
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Many years ago I worked on a large commodities based financial trading application for a large company. In my case, we hired PHDs and math geniuses to write the most important calculations and we just called them and invoked them on demand. The gist is that my experience is unless you're requested to do intense financial calculations in your job description, with a required strong math background, chances are they realize the skills do not typically overlap. We had to teach one guy how to write calculations in C#, and how to tell us what injection dependencies he might require, but we submitted numbers and got answers we assumed we could trust.
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I worked for a quants team some years back and they did all the math heavy lifting and I only had to figure out how to implement their magic. Also, worked trading floors and found that a strong disposition and not letting the traders bully you was more important than my coding ability.
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Only quant roles are maths intensive. If you're not applying for one, you can rest assured that's not what they're hiring you for.
It's most likely high level UI work, so you'll have to be good with asynchronous programming, dealing with different third party products and frameworks, etc. Ask, ask, ask questions during the interviews.
Cheers,
विक्रम
"We have already been through this, I am not going to repeat myself." - fat_boy, in a global warming thread 
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As others have said, there's usually a pretty clear separation between developers and quants.
The quants are the math geniuses who write the valuation models.
The developers handle the UIs, data processing, and the less-intensive math.
As a general rule for the non-quant side, expect to need algebra but not calculus. Some understanding of finance is always helpful, but if they didn't ask for it, they're probably just looking for UI work. Just make sure you're clear with them about what you can and can't do.
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