Shoutbox

quote:

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Originally posted by multimillion2k
(...) That is, until he got to explaining what a floppy is. He pulled a 3 1/2" disk out of his pocket and said:

Tour Guide: "A lot of people don't know why they call it a floppy because, you see here--" (shakes disk) "--it's not floppy. But you see that's just the outside." (pries case apart, removes interior, shakes it) "Inside, you see, it's floppy. That's why they call it that. You need floppies because sometimes the computer can have what's called a fall-down. I dunno why they call it a fall-down, but that's why you need the floppies or else you lose the stuff in the computer."

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That's not entirly correct though. That computer history museum tour-guide needs to brush up his computer history lessons and don't give twisted facts to his public

It is called floppy because it does flop if you wave it. Thus it is not because the inside is floppy, it is because the outside was floppy.

The first floppy disks where much bigger then today's floppy disks (12", 8" and 5.25") and hadn't a hard outercase but a plastic and flexible outercase which flops when you shake it. That's were the name comes from.

But when the little 3" (very little known) and 3.5" (what we know  today as a floppy disc) discs came about, you could adapt that fact to the inside though, as that is still of the same material. although it isn't the original meaning anymore...

(other formats which were developped, but not always with success or use in practice: 2" and 4")

* The first floppy discs were 8 inch big...
* Then came the 5.25" floppy disc which some people here might remember (still with a floppy outer casing)
* After that a 3" floppy disc was developped. Not many know this as the disc was not very widely spread and not much of a succes. This was the first floppy disc with a hard plastic outer casing.
* Then the 3.5" floppy disc came about, the one we all know today.
(note that the designation 3.5" isn't entirly correct either. Since this floppy disc came about, the measurements are based upon ISO standards and those are in metric units and not Imperial units. The 3.5" disc must in fact measure 90.0mm by 94.0mm or thus 3.5433 inches in reality.)





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Fall-down (In PC context): When a PC falls down it is broken and information is most likely lost. Instead of saying "I dropped some computer components and now it is broken", one said: "my computer had a fall-down".

Bug / debugging: Some believe it is called like that because once in '45, a moth was detected between the relays of a Mark II computer which resulted in program failure. The guy's who removed it said they "debugged" the machine and thus had removed the fault, the "bug". But truth is that the word "bug" was already commonly used way before that to indicate faults in various equipment...

And I can go on for a long time with those (useless) PC history facts