History of the Diskette

NEVER forget to bring cell phone while on the move? How does it feel? Irritated, annoyed and curse myself that's for sure, obviously if there's still time to pick it up of course we have not rushed to pick it up? Taste-it's now no objects other than cell phones are so attached to our daily activities. One or two decades ago, floppy diskette or often called 'floppy' alone has experienced a similar fate with a mobile phone. Its presence is crucial and always needed because the floppy diskette is the only portable data storage media, compact and easy to carry anywhere. Floppy diskette even viewed as a finding that became milestones in the world of ease and practicality of information systems. From a floppy diskette, was born a variety of other portable storage media such as CDs, flash, external hard drives, zip drives, and so on.

Now this is already not so many people are using floppy diskettes for starting displaced by the presence of his successor storage media. But the image of the floppy drive is still attached among computer users as a form of floppy diskettes immortalized iconic 'save' in a number of computer applications. Well, for those of you who want to know the history of the floppy diskette the following is the story of its origins.

Floppy Diskettes begins
1967 the floppy diskette technology was developed by a number of IBM's crew under the leadership of Alan Shugart. Four years later the floppy diskette is launched into the market and get a warm welcome because at the time it becomes an alternative data storage medium than disk. But when it launched a floppy diskette, but it's not 'Memory Disk'. Physical 'Memory Disk' is the rather large size: 8 inches, and can only store data at 79.7 kb (kilobytes).Any stored data can not be modified or deleted.
In 1984, IBM introduced the floppy diskette with a smaller physical shape measuring 3 ½ inches and can store data up to 720 kb. The storage capacity of floppy diskettes and then grow to 1.44megabytes (mb) and several major manufacturers like Sony BASF, Verbatim, Maxell, etc. produce different variants. Floppy diskettes continue to thrive until the mid 90s decade. At that time the floppy diskette mushroomed on every user's computer because it is the only alternative data storage that can be taken anywhere because of its size that fits in the pocket.

The verge of extinction?

The decline of the floppy diskette begins in 1998 when Apple Computer launched its iMac product that does not include a floppy drive in the product. Moreover, later began to be discovered technologies zip drives, CDs, DVDs, memory cards, flash disks, etc., so some other computer manufacturers began to include a floppy drive in different variants of the computer.
 

April 2010, one of the largest manufacturers of floppy diskettes, Sony, announced it would immediately stop production of floppy disks in March 2011. Is this a sign of the extinction of the floppy diskette? The answer, not necessarily! Because some other major manufacturers such as Verbatim, Maxell, 3M claims are still producing hundreds of thousands of pieces of floppy diskette each month. Floppy disks are still required by some musicians to store data on a keyboard instrument, as well as some specific ATM machines that require a floppy diskette to install the program. Even the production of advanced computers are still in desperate need of a floppy diskette if you want to upgrade the BIOS. How about you? Do I still need the 'icon of practicality' is?