Wednesday, April 26, 2017
History of Floppy Discs
Floppy disks also known as a floppy, or diskette was a type of storage used in the 70s, 80s, and 90s for computers. Because computers had very little memory at this time, computer companies were looking for the most effective ways to store data. The floppy disks would hold applications such as photoshop or games, which often took many disks for a single application. During the mid 90s, people started to turn away from Floppy disks because there better options for storing large files such as flash drives and CDs.
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Before floppy disks, computers read a paper tape, which could store around four kilobytes. The floppy disks in the image above aren't the original "floppy." Those little ones with the colorful hard cases were released around the early 80s. The vast majority of computers in the 1970s did not even have any storage built into the computer, so if you did not have a floppy disk, then the computer was useless. Most computers would take in one floppy disk at a time, but large government databases could read and write 16 floppy disks at one time. Floppy disks are nowhere near the quality of memory and storage we have today and cannot run modern programs, nor can they run as secure encryption. Updating hardware, especially in government facilities that house nuclear missiles is essential. In 2014, CBS toured a nuclear launch control center and learned that the machines they use are extremely outdated and still use 8.5-inch floppy disks. This is an issue today because of the security concerns. In the context of history, sloppy disks definitively made computers faster and more easily accessible to a growing number of users.
ReplyDeleteArticle: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/whos-minding-the-nuclear-weapons/