Why are floppy disks called floppy disks if they are not floppy?
by 
Level 47 And Counting...
ANSWERS: 4
-
Lol! Funny question! Why are they called that?
-
They may not be so floppy now but they used to be really floppy back in the days when they 5.25 inch size and even larges. The so floppy in fact that you could fold them in half without taking the protective cover off. Search the web for some images and will see.
-
The disk is actually flexible (floppy)
-
Wow, you’re making me feel really old. :-) The “floppy” part is *inside* the disk. Back in the ’70s, floppy disks were these 8″ behemoths that held a whopping 79.7kB. What’s more, the protective casing they were in was actually floppy! In the late ’70s, companies like IBM and Apple started using the new 5¼″ floppy disks, which were awesome: they held 360kB per side! People complained about the loss of their old eight-inchers, but eventually everybody moved on… until the Macintosh came out. The Mac was among the first computers to use 3½″ floppies. The floppy part was encased in a hard, outer shell, and of course people complained again—but these floppies held 720kB—eventually doubled to 1.44MB. Wow. Finally, in 1998, Apple bucked convention yet again and completely did away with the floppy drive—the beginning of the end. And guess what people did…. Funny how history repeats itself.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Copyright 2023, Wired Ivy, LLC