IBM begins development of the floppy disk

1967
IBM begins development of the floppy disk

In 1967 IBM product manager Alan Shugart asked a small team of engineers led by David L. Noble to develop a new, inexpensive solution for loading code on the IBM 3330 mainframe.

Their solution, code-named Minnow, was the first flexible magnetic storage disk, an 8-inch floppy drive with removable "memory disks". The flexible Mylar disks were coated with magnetic material that could store data. The disks had a capacity of 80 kilobytes, equivalent to approximately 3,000 punched cards.

IBM shipped the first units, now called the 23FD floppy disk drive, in 1971. The technology was patented in 1972.

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IBM begins development of the floppy disk

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