History of the floppy disk

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, readable by a floppy disk drive (FDD), and sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric which serves the purpose of keeping the data storage disk free of foreign particles such as dust.

Work on the drive for what became the media of "the world's first" floppy disk drive began in 1967 at a San Jose (CA) IBM facility. First introduced into the market as 8-inch floppy disks in 1972, they were followed by 5¼-inch disks in 1976 and 3½-inch disks in 1982. A number of varient sizes with limited market success were also available. Low-cost floppy drives became indispensable for word processors and PCs.

Floppy disks remained a popular portable digital-storage medium for nearly 40 years.

Throughout the period in which floppy disks were common, they went through numerous improvements, each time significantly improving their available storage capacity and reducing their physical size as computer data storage technology advanced. Sizes ranged from 8 inches in the first commercialized floppy disk to the popular-in-its-day 5¼-inch minifloppy to the 3½-inch floppy disks still available today.

There was a time in the late 1980s and early 1990s when some software was shipped with both 5¼-inch and 3½-inch floppy disks or was offered in a choice of either, e.g. MS-DOS 6.22

In the early-2000s, floppy disks slowly lost popularity as better technology developed which was able to offer higher levels of storage capacity, smaller physical characteristics, and faster processing speeds.

This fadeout was already on its way in the mid-1990s, as noted by a 1994 "Floppy disk drive prices falling" headline on an article that began "Floppy disk drive revenues are falling down and they can't get up."

While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater capacity such as USB flash drives, portable external hard disk drives, optical discs, memory cards, and computer networks.

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