The floppy disk was a ubiquitous technology for nearly 40 years. From mainframes to home computers, the plastic disk was everywhere. And in the decades it was around there were very few changes made to how it fundamentally worked. So how did it get so popular? What made the floppy disk so flexible? And how did it finally fall out of favor? In this episode we will look at the technology's early days.

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Important dates in this episode:

1971: 8 Inch Floppy Disk(Minnow) Created at IBM
1976: Shugart Invents 5 1/4 Inch Floppy Disk

In the 1930's, we continued experimenting with magnets and electricity, creating places to save data for the first time, including a Memory Drum and tape (thanks to BASF).  Alan Turing puts human learning to a machine for the first time, and two computers across the northeast do math together.