I still think nothing beats diskettes in convenience, too bad innovation stopped.
Also diskettes were cheap enough that if you gave one to someone, you probably did not ask for it back. USB Drives, not so much. Also flash drives are not 'flat' like diskettes were, so there would be a bit of a bulge in the envelope if you needed to mail one. FWIW, I know Lawyers who still mail documents out, but now they use flash drives.
Yes one could use CDs, but burning them is a PITA sometimes, plus many Laptops no longer come with a CD Drive these days.
A but OT, but I have noticed recently some Flash Drive Tolerances are a bit off. I have some flash drives that you need to apply a decent amount of force to plug them in, others fit in easy. Diskettes never had this issue :)
Always associated 3-1/4 with mac and sony. Ps/2 yes. But is all ibm?
"Two years later, IBM introduced the 3½-inch floppy disk that featured 1.44 megabytes of storage space and a plastic case surrounding the internal disk, a format that became the mainstay of computing in the 1990s. The 3½-inch disks were more compact and had higher storage capacity, and the rigid case provided better protection."
The article makes it sound that way, but it was Sony who introduced 3.5" drives (IBM, later, increased the density).
The whole article is rather IBM and Floppy biased, going as far as implying that Floppys enabled the Software Industry. Why the propaganda for a dead medium?
Its all IBM PR :) 3 1/4 was Japan, HD drives was Japan, ED drives was Japan, TD drives was Japan. Cheap two head drives was afaik Tandon, IBM had an elaborate expensive and complicated mechanism moving both heads while Tandon decided to keep bottom head stationary. IBM cross licensed patents with Tandon when they made a deal to ship Tandon TM-100-2A floppies in PCs.
I did not understand how the second head could be stationary as it would only reach one track, but looking at Tandon’s patent I see now that you meant fixed only in the axis normal to the disk:
> Recently, however, the floppy disc industry has started to use both sides of the floppy disc for data transfer operations, the purpose primarily being to increase capacity. Thus only a single relatively low speed accessing mechanism continues to be employed, and the transducers on opposite sides of the element are in a generally opposed relation, with only a slight offset in the head gaps to avoid flux interaction. Because it is thought necessary to account for perturbations in movement of the flexible disc from its principal plane, recording heads and mounts are utilized that are essentially derived from the flying head technology. Specifically, *** a pair of small, identical slider heads are used, each mounted adjacent the end of a long resilient cantilevered head support *** , and mechanically urged together with a total force of approximately 8 grams. The concept is that as the flexible disc deviates from its principal plane, both of the heads tend to follow the actual position of the disc passing between them and permit contact recording without excessive wear or signal degradation. Accepted industry standards for functional specifications are 1,000,000 revolutions without substantial degradation in reproduced signal amplitude, and 3,000,000 revolutions without significant head wear.
> There are, however, *** significant problems and limitations arising from the use of this double, symmetrical and very compliant head mechanism *** . The resilient mounts are relatively complex and must be precisely manufactured, and therefore are costly to manufacture and maintain. Furthermore, they require redesign, by each floppy disc manufacturer, of the carriage, head support mechanisms and associated structure, becase they have volumetric configurations incompatible with current structures. In addition, the head loading force and the mechanical configuration require that special provision be made to insure that the head does not constantly land at the same point and thereby cause undue wear. In addition, the long flexible columns used in the existing type of structure tend to bend in a slight S shape or shift differentially in response to perturbations in the disc surface position. This introduces both a degree of offset relative to the track center, reducing reproduced signal amplitude and tending to limit the positional accuracy which can be obtained, which in turn limits the track density which can be achieved. [...]
> SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION: A device for effecting data recording and reproduction operations with each of the two sides of a pliant, non-rigid magnetic record element employs *** a fixed transducer on one side and a resilient element supporting a movable transducer on the other *** . An asymmetrical system is thus provided in which the record element is deflected by the fixed transducer but confined against the fixed transducer, despite perturbations in its movement, by the movable transducer. The movable transducer may be a smaller slider transducer that is mounted via a short length gimbal adjacent the end of a spring-loaded pivotable support arm. The arm mechanism urges the slider transducer and the intervening record element against the surface of the fixed transducer with a light force, although the fixed transducer is positioned to penetrate slightly into the nominal plane of the record element. The configuration of *** the spring-loaded arm mounting the slider transducer is compatible with the configuration of the mechanism ordinarily supporting a pressure pad, so that the structure is thus directly substitutable in the space avilable in the prior single sided system *** . The spring-loaded support arm has a high damping coefficient and effectively holds the flexible magnetic recording element against the fixed transducer, at a precise radial position, as well as correcting deflections of the record element, although wear is less than in existing double sided systems.
U.S. Patent 4,151,573, Apr. 24, 1979 https://patents.google.com/patent/US4151573