Brian J White wrote on 2002-07-12 05:41 UTC: > >And it may in fact be the same situation as a floppy disk. Made to 90 mm > >width, but called a 3.5.
The 90-mm floppy disk was designed completely in metric by a Japanese manufacturer (Sony). It became called the 3.5" floppy only when IBM started using it in the US in 1986 with its PS/2 series of personal computers. > It may be...which is why I am asking for some kind of > source/proof/documentation. The foreword of American National Standard X3.171-1989 (section 1.3) *explicitely* says this product is a metric design and that the millimeter dimensions given in the standard are the authoritative ones (and the inch values are only provided to simplify life for US manufacturers). I have a copy of ANSI X3.171 here on my desk, and the outer dimensions of the disk are exactly 94.0 x 90.0 x 3.3 mm, and the disk diameter is exactly 85.80 mm Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
