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However, because it is contained in a rigid
case, it never actually has the opportunity to flop. It's better described as a
flexible disk (which was the original term, anyway).
The 90 mm floppy disk
is indeed floppy. Floppy refers to the actual disk which is flexible as
opposed to the platters of a fixed hard disk which are
rigid.
Phil
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Han Maenen
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2004 10:08
AM
To: U.S. Metric
Association
Subject:
[USMA:31126] from the SI site
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
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