4x8 grid of bits in 10+ square centimeters?

They should go to the Philippines and find the ~60 year old women who would have been girls in the late '60s to show them how to thread core memory densely!

Don't forget the mercury delay lines. A bit more dramatic from a hazmat perspective but gives you large amounts of street cred.

What about Williams Tubes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube

Solid state mechanisms, how quaint. How about torsion delay line memory?

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/calculator_memory_tec...

Man, this is a hacker project.

I wonder how well this would work in harsh environments... I heard once (circa 2006) that core memory was being investigated for spaceflight.

Investigated or reinvestigated?

The guidance systems on the Apollo missions 40 years ago used core memory, woven into "ropes".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory