I remember sometime I think in 1985 my late friend Ed Clark who was one of the biggest nerds I had ever met, and by the way I loved that about him, called me up and told me he wanted to take me to a meeting of a computer club because there was this new software coming out that I needed to be aware of. Now let me tell you that all through the 70s and early 80s I was a nerd wannabe. There was so much to learn, there was so much going on and technology was growing faster than dollar weed in my front yard.
So that evening Ed Clark picked me up at my house at about 5:00 and took me to a union hall somewhere in Pinellas Park. We arrived at about 6:00 and the meeting was to start at 7:00. Being somewhat confused and ever so slightly annoyed I said hey what the hell are we doing here an hour early he said it’s the only way we can be sure we’re going to get a seat I said OK. He was right, by the time the meeting started all 300 seats had been taken up and there was standing room only in the back.
That was the first time I came in contact with a local organization called the Pinellas IBM Users Group. A gentleman come out to talk about his new software that was going to revolutionize computers as we knew it today and he had copies of that software that he was going to give away to about 10 people and I was lucky enough to be one of those 10 people. The software was called Geo Works. It came on eleven 5 and 1/4 inch floppy disks. It magically turned my original IBM compatible computer that was running on dos into a graphical user interface that had a word processor, a graphics designer program a spreadsheet and a few other things. It took me forever to load this thing on to my 386 computer. That is when I wondered who came up with the technology of floppy disks. I know they got better because we eventually went to 3 1/2 inch plastic floppy disk and then to cd-roms and now all of those are gone. I did a little research today to find out the history of the floppy disk and I was a bit surprised.
The floppy disk originated at IBM in the late 1960s. In 1967, IBM engineers led by Alan Shugart developed the first 8-inch floppy disk as a reliable and portable method for loading microcode into IBM System/370 mainframes. This is just a guess but I’m gonna bet you that this gentleman now has a whole bunch of money stashed away and probably sits on the beach drinking cocktails with umbrellas sticking out the side.
The 5.25-inch Era
In 1976, Shugart Associates (founded by Alan Shugart after leaving IBM) introduced the 5.25-inch floppy disk, which quickly became the standard for personal computers like the Apple II, Commodore 64, and early IBM PCs. These disks initially stored about 110KB but eventually reached capacities of 1.2MB with high-density versions.
The 3.5-inch Revolution
Sony introduced the 3.5-inch floppy disk format in 1981, which was eventually adopted by Apple for the Macintosh in 1984 and by IBM for the PS/2 line in 1987. These disks featured a rigid plastic case with a sliding metal shutter protecting the magnetic media, making them more durable than their predecessors.
Legacy and Obsolescence
Apple’s iMac, released in 1998, was among the first mainstream computers to eliminate the floppy drive. Dell stopped including floppy drives in dimension desktops in 2003, and by 2007, only 2% of computers sold at retail still included floppy drives.
I remember the last program I bought on 3 1/2 inch floppy drives was QuickBooks and as I recall there was about five of those discs that I had to insert into my computer to load the program. About two years later when I wanted to buy the newest version it came on something called a CD-ROM and you had to have a CD-ROM drive in your computer. Now today we are so lucky that if I want to buy QuickBooks I can’t, I can only rent it online. The same goes for the Microsoft 365 which includes the word processor that I am writing this article on. Kind of makes you wonder what’s going to happen next. By the way when my friend Ed Clark passed away some years back I went to help clean out his home and in one of the bedrooms he had 10 very large boxes that were filled with 3 1/2 inch floppy disk drives that he had picked up somewhere. I always wanted to figure out a way to see what was on all of these things but instead they made their way to the dumpster.