Farewell to Floppies

Alternative backup formats, new storage such as the CD–RW and the arrival of mass internet access, consigned the floppy disk to the dusty corner of peoples’ desks and, eventually, the bin.

The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971 by IBM and heralded as a revolutionary device as it replaced the old–fashioned punch–cards. The eight–inch plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide was nicknamed "floppy" because of its flexibility. With technology advancement the disk shrank to five–and–a–quarter inches in 1976. By 1981, Sony shrank it some more – this time to three–and–a–half inches – the standard used to this day.

During 1980s and 1990s, only the floppies provided the essential back–up as well as playing a crucial role in transferring data and distributing software.

By the early 1990s, the growing complexity of software meant that many programs were distributed on sets of floppies. But the end of the decade saw software distribution swap to CD–ROM.

The first nail in the coffin came in 1998, when the iMac was revealed without a floppy disk drive. Then in 2003, Dell banished disk drives from its higher spec machines.

In 1998, an estimated 2 billion floppy disks were sold, according to the Recording Media Industries Association of Japan. Since then global demand has fallen by around two–thirds to an estimated 700 million by 2006.

With computer users increasingly using the internet or USB memory sticks – some of which store 2,000 times the capacity of the floppy disk – to transfer data, floppies are becoming increasingly redundant.

Source: BBC News