A long journey from idea to icon: the floppy disk turns 50

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Fifty years ago, IBM introduced the first ever floppy disk drive, the IBM 23FD, and the first floppy disks. The convenient and lightweight medium quickly gained popularity and is still used today. Let's recall the history of this iconic invention.



Beginning
In the 1960s, computer manufacturers used solid-state transistor memory, which lost its contents when the computer was turned off. IBM was looking for a way to quickly load software after the computer was turned on. Traditionally, punched cards or magnetic tape reels were used for this, but these were very slow and cumbersome solutions.

In 1967, engineers began developing a removable storage medium that could store information without power and be portable. Soon, an IBM team led by David Noble came up with a flexible, rotating plastic disk greece number data impregnated with iron oxide. It could hold a magnetic charge, much like magnetic tape. For reliability, the disk was placed in a plastic case with a cloth that swept away dust as it rotated.


Two diagrams from IBM's 1972 floppy disk drive patents. Diagram: U.S. Patent Office

In 1971, IBM introduced the world's first commercial floppy disk drive, the 23FD drive system. It could play 8-inch (20.3 cm) square disks with a capacity of about 80 KB. It had no write function - it was read-only.

IBM itself loaded the data onto the disks, which were then distributed to remote computer systems to install system updates. Initially, the new disks were called "Magnetic Recording Disk" or "Magnetic Disk Cartridge".


IBM magnetic disk cartridge from 1971 - the first commercial floppy disk

IBM called the new medium a "floppy disk" because, unlike the rigid aluminum disks, it could be bent. The idea was so innovative that in 1972, ComputerWorld described the floppy disk, developed by Innovex, as "a sheet of magnetic film."

In 1973, IBM released an improved version of the 8-inch media called the "IBM Diskette" (the English word diskette means a small disk and indicates a secondary position in relation to hard disks in a computer system). A special IBM 33FD disk drive allowed data to be written to the disk and played back. Therefore, IBM positioned the diskette as a new medium.