The 5.25-inch floppy disk, introduced in 1976 by Shugart Associates, turns 50 this year, though it hasn't been able to celebrate in person for quite some time. The original "minifloppy" held a whopping 88 kilobytes, roughly enough for a few pages of text. It evolved into the sturdier 3.5-inch disk in the early 1980s. Millions of Mac and PC users remember feeding those their machines one after another. (If you owned a 1986 Macintosh, you know the ritual.) Apple fired the first shot in 1998, shipping the iMac without a floppy drive. Dell dropped them as standard equipment in 2003. By 2011, all floppy disk manufacturing had ceased worldwide. The floppy's lasting legacy? The save icon on your toolbar, a tiny picture of a disk that most people under 30 have never actually held. (Source: Mental Floss)
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