When Files Shrunk: A Personal Journey Through the Early Days of Compression
In the late 80s, I discovered PKARC — a lightning‑fast tool that made files shrink before my eyes. It was the era of floppies and dial‑up modems, when compression wasn’t a luxury but a necessity. That memory led me to revisit the lineage of file compression: from SQ and LU on early CP/M systems, to ARC’s breakthrough in 1985, to Phil Katz’s PKARC and the birth of PKZIP in 1989. ZIP became the universal standard, surviving decades of technological change. This story traces how those early tools shaped the way we still store and share data today.
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