Invented

• IBM was the inventor of the floppy disc and therefore the first company to manufacture the devices. They were an instant hit and brought the company esteem among its peers. IBM also was able to pave the way to new and better technology that made it easier to carry files on a person and between different computers. IBM wanted to make an affordable file storage system, and they accomplished that with the original floppy disc and the updated versions that were spawned later.
  
  

History of

• The original 8-inch floppy disc was first made commercially available by IBM in 1971. It was later redesigned in 1976 by two Shugart Associate employees who made a less expensive 5 ½ inch model that was able to hold more information. Throughout the 80s, companies such as Sony and Hewlett-Packard created their own versions of floppy discs, each a different size. By the end of the decade, it was the 3 ½ inch floppy that was the new reigning champion of floppy discs. They were popular throughout the 90s until they were replaced by more sophisticated hardware.
  
  

Identification

• Floppy discs are thin pieces of pliable plastic that are square in shape. Their dimensions (8, 5 ¼, or 3 ½ inches) give a clue as to how much they hold and when they were made. The smaller the floppy disc, the later it was made and the more it holds. At the end of each disk is a piece of metal that slides to expose the magnetic strip inside that is responsible for storing information.
  
  

Function

• Floppy discs are used to save information from a computer on. Software was once available on floppy discs, and work from word processors could be saved on them and transferred to other computers. They were the predecessor to today's Flash drives. Computers from the 1970s to the 1990s were equipped with floppy drives that would read the information stored on the disks and upload them onto the computer. Depending on the year the computer made, the floppy drive may have been a different size to fit in with whatever size floppy disc was popular at the time.
  
  

Type

• There are three major types of floppy discs. The first discs that came out in 1971 were the 8-inch floppy discs. These could hold up to 79.27 KB. They were replaced with the smaller 5 ¼-inch floppy disc that was able to hold more information, up to 89.6 KB. There are short-lived 2-inch floppy discs as well, but more common are the 3 ½-inch discs that can hold 720 KB or more, depending on the year that it was manufactured.