[USMA:31126] from the SI site

[Han Maenen]

From the IEC SI site about mebibites, kibibites and the "3.5 inch" floppy disk:   Despite its inaccuracy and the inappropriate use of the decimal SI prefix, the term was also easy for salesmen and shops to use, and it caught on with the public. Take, for example, the ubiquitous and so-called 3,5 inch floppy disk, which is said to have a capacity of 1,44 MB (megabytes). This is wrong on at least three counts: first, the word floppy no longer really applies as it did to the 5,25 inch predecessor; secondly, the physical size is 90 mm, not 3,5 inches; but more significantly, the capacity, originally described as 1 440 kB (kilobytes) before being �translated� to 1,44 MB, is in fact a little over 2 % inaccurate because of the double misuse of a decimal prefix.   Han Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands