There are a lot of practical and aesthetic benefits to raised access flooring, but one of the biggest use cases is in a type of commercial and industrial room that is getting bigger and more abundant by the day.
Every business needs access to a data centre, taking the form of either their own server room or access to specialist facilities for this purpose.
This allows for the use of cloud storage, remote working environments, online infrastructure and even the application of technologies such as artificial intelligence when and where it is appropriate.
Because of the sheer number of computer systems in place, and therefore the need to safely store cabling that is out of the way and yet at the same time readily accessible, access floors are all but essential parts of a server room setup, and are also often used as part of cooling systems.
The necessity of all of this was proven at the very start of computing history.
The Trailing Cables Of ENIAC
First constructed in 1943 but only finished in 1945, the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer was the first general-purpose digital computer that was programmable and completely electronic without the moving parts of other similar early computers.
The ENIAC machine was groundbreaking and highly influential in a lot of ways as an early example of a modular, versatile machine capable of exceptionally complex calculations and operations, with one of its first tasks contributing to the development of thermonuclear weapons.
However it was also the size of a server room today but with components in 40 panels that were both highly interdependent on each other and extremely unreliable, requiring them to be constantly replaced.
This would have been easier if raised flooring that would allow for effective cable management and ease of organisation was available, but instead, the different components of the ENIAC itself were raised off the ground on legs so that cables, switches and vacuum tubes could be reached.
It worked after a fashion, but it was far from an elegant solution by any means, and whilst it was suitable for military research and education purposes, better cable management was required to ensure that the complex machine was only maintained by qualified, skilled technicians and engineers.
This means that specialised rooms and environments were necessary in order for a computer to work at its best, which led to the development of standardised equipment racks, cable trays for storing cables overhead and access flooring became necessary.
This is why the ENIAC’s cluttered militaristic setting is a far cry from computer rooms barely a decade later.
The first ever raised floor computer room was in 1956, invented by IBM as an effective form of cable management, connectivity and cooling.
Big Blue had become an early pioneer in computing and found that cable management under the floor was more affordable, easier to maintain and cheaper overall to use than an equivalent access ceiling.
By the 1970s, it had become standard to use access flooring for both cooling and wiring, and by the 1980s offices with computer equipment often had access flooring for convenience and aesthetic reasons.
