15 Sep
2015
15 Sep
'15
1:51 a.m.
On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 2:39 AM, Adrian Graham
<binarydinosaurs at gmail.com> wrote:
I've been contacted by a teacher who's looking
for any information about
12" floppies. Am I imagining that they really existed? I'm sure I've seen
one or seen adverts for them, maybe at Bletchley Park. Others he's
contacted think he's getting confused with 12" laser discs but I'm not so
sure.
When IBM introduced the floppy disk in 1971, they were 8-inch, and
that became industry standard, partially supplanted by 5 1/4" when
Shugart introduced those in 1976, then 3.5" introduced by Sony and HP
in 1982. There were a few other oddball sizes like 4", 3 1/4", 3", 2
1/2", and 2", but none of them were very successful. The market
pressure was always to reduce the size of the medium, so I can't
imagine why anyone would have made 12" floppy disks.