The Role and Evolution of Data Compression in Computing

One of the signal achievements of computing is data compression: we take in data, make it smaller while retaining all information ('lossless' compression), transmit it, and then decompress it back to the original at the other end.

For many years, compression was an absolute requirement to get things done: storage devices were too small for the data we wanted to store and networks too slow to transmit what we wanted at an acceptable speed.

Today compression is less often an absolute requirement but it can still make our lives usefully better.