In 1971, IBM introduced the first floppy disk, The first floppy was an 8"
plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide, data was written to and read
from the disk's surface. The floppy disk was considered a revolutionary
device at the time.
The first disks were designed for loading codes into the controller of the
Merlin IBM 3330 disk pack file. So, in effect, the first floppies were used
to fill another type of data storage device. Overnight, additional uses for
the floppy were discovered, making it the new file storage medium.
The Floppy is a circle of magnetic material similar to any kind of recording
tape, one or two sides of the disk are used for recording. The disk drive
grabs the floppy by its centre and spins it like a cd inside its housing.
The read/write head, much like the head on a tape recorder, contacts the
surface through an opening in the plastic case.
In 1976, the 5 1/4" flexible disk drive and diskette was developed by Alan
Shugart for Wang Laboratories. Wang had wanted a smaller floppy disk and
drive to use with their desktop computers. By 1978, more than 10
manufacturers were producing 5 1/4" floppy drives, with Sony introducing in
1981 the first 3 1/2" floppy drives and diskettes. This is the floppy
familiar to today's computer user.
Not used much these days, good quality floppy disks were expensive at one
time, but like all products the price soon dropped, where you could pick up
100 floppies (pre formatted for use) for less than ?5 These days when you install a program, its usually from a CD, however
this was not the case when floppies were the latest craze, programs like
Lotus 123 came on 8 floppy disks (1.4Mb) and it took a long time to install
things, count yourself lucky :)
