A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible ("floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. In 1975, Burroughs' plant in Glenrothes developed a prototype 5.25-inch drive, stimulated both by the need to overcome the larger 8-inch floppy's asymmetric expansion properties with changing humidity, and to reflect the knowledge that IBM's audio recording products division was demonstrating a dictation machine using 5.25-inch drive. In 1976 two of Shugart Associates's employees, Jim Adkisson and Don Massaro, were approached by An Wang of Wang Laboratories, who felt that the 8-inch format was simply too large for the desktop word processing machines he was developing at the time. After meeting in a bar in Boston, Adkisson asked Wang what size he thought the disks should be, and Wang pointed to a napkin and said "about that size". Adkisson took the napkin back to California, found it to be 5.25-inch wide, and developed a new drive of this size storing 98.5 KB later increased to 110 KB by adding 5 tracks. This is believed to be the first standard computer medium that was not promulgated by IBM. |