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Floppy disks were an almost universal data format from the 1970s into the 1990s, used for primary data storage as well as for backup and data transfers between computers. In 1967, at an IBM facility in San Jose, California, work began on a drive that led to the world's first floppy disk and disk drive. [1]
The floppy disk, a ubiquitous and portable storage device, enjoyed widespread popularity from the 1970s to the late 1990s, making it an iconic symbol of the computer era’s early stages. This storage medium featured a distinctive construction of a slim, pliable plastic disk coated with a magnetic material securely enclosed within a protective ...
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk. The three most popular (and commercially ...
The floppy disk was considered a revolutionary device in the "history of computers" due to its portability, which provided a new and easy physical means of transporting data from computer to computer. Invented by IBM engineers led by Alan Shugart, the first disks were designed for loading microcodes into the controller of the Merlin (IBM 3330 ...
Shugart joined Memorex in 1969 as Vice President of its Equipment Division and led the development of its 3660 (compatible with IBM 2314) and 3670 (compatible with IBM 3330) disk storage subsystems. His team also developed the Memorex 650, one of the first commercially available floppy disk drives.
8-inch floppy disk. The first floppy was developed in IBM’s San Jose facility, home of the original hard disk. It stored about 80KB. A key invention was the soft wipe inside the disk’s jacket to reduce wear. View Artifact Detail
The first floppy disks held only 64 kilobytes of data (about the same size as a blank Microsoft Word document today) which stored both the operating system and the program. Cheap and small, floppy disks became popular for personal computer use.
