The Evolution of Floppy Disk

Of course none of us use floppy disks to store data anymore but they used to be one of the most useful data storage devices at one point in time. I remember storing all my essays and papers and what not while I was in high school. Good times. Although we do not use floppy disk anymore (some still do) it is important to sometimes take a walk down the memory lane and take a look at them. Here are some pointers that show the evolution of Floppy disks.

1971

• IBM introduced 8 inch floppy disk in 1971
• Initial capacity approximately 100KB
• Radioshack had an internal floppy drive which was capable of storing 5KB.

1976

• Shugart introduced 5 1/4 inch floppy disk in 1976
• Initial capacity = 100KB
• Later the capacity was upto 1.2 MB
• In 1977 Northstar became the first computer with built in 5 1/4 inch internal floppy drives.

1980

• Sony introduced 31/2 inch floppy disks in 1980
• It could hold upto 400K
• Apple Macintosh in 1984 had an internal floppy drive capable of holding 400KB

Hope you enjoyed a little “Floppy Drive” history .

[source : oldcomputers]