On Sun, 21 Aug 2022, Tom Gardner via cctalk wrote:
The only person who ever promulgated the "Dr. Wang bar napkin" story was Jim
Porter who was not in any way involved with the decision as to the size of
the 5½ drive or media size and only began telling his tale many years after
the decision.
Both Massaro and Adkisson deny there was ever such a meeting in a bar with
Dr. Wang.
Some doubt Dr. Wang was ever in a bar with a vendor :-)
My research suggests customers of Adkisson, e.g. Lanier, and not Wang Labs,
asked for a smaller and less expensive drive, with media about the size of a
cocktail napkin.
Adkisson took this request to SA management. Wang was then their big
customer for 8-inch drives.
Massaro and Adkisson then did discuss this with Dr. Wang who did express a
need for such a drive as a replacement; faster, more reliable and less
expensive than the 8-track tape drive used by Wang Labs. It was also
presented to Mohawk Data who was also interested.
Shugart engineering then sized the drive based upon a survey of the size of
8 track tape drives and then sized the media as what is the largest that
could reasonably fit within the drive envelope. The fact that the media size
is about the size of some cocktail napkins is a coincidence.
BTW as far as I can tell there is no standard size for cocktail napkins
circa 1976 and the one sample I found from that era is smaller than the
5¼-inch medium envelope.
The corruption of history is indeed tragic both here and at the Smithsonian
- BTW, I did send their webmaster a request for correction
In
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/5.25_3.5_Floppy_Drive/5.25_and_3.5_Floppy_Panel.oral_history.2005.102657925.pdf
Jim Porter attributes it to Jimmy Adkisson.
I seriously considered getting some custom napkins printed up (bars
sometimes have personalized napkins; 5.25" is available, although these
days, bars usually use smaller, just to keep from making rings on the
tables), with just the outline of a 5.25" disk jacket printed on them
(perimeter, write enable notch, index hole, and oval access slot), and a
version of the story, IFF it could be confirmed on the back. If such were
to be made up, the gifte shoppe at CHM could probably sell alot of them.
A relatively common Comdex freebie was 3.5" disk imaged rubbery coasters,
But, Massaro, who should know, refutes the story. Although his version is
about a cardboard mockup of the DRIVE, done in the backseat of a car, NOT
the origin of the diskette size.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
