FOR anyone over the age of 40 and familiar with computers, floppy disks were a fact of life until what feels like relatively recently. Older medical equipment also requires the use of floppy disks to move data around and update their software. Until 2019, the US still used floppy disks to store codes for their nuclear arsenal though they have since modernised their computers and thus ditched the floppy. In fact, the last company that sold brand new floppy disks – Sony - shut down production in 2011. It is estimated that during its peak, something like five billion floppy disks were made per year in the 1990s.

Source: New York Times August 07, 2023 04:32 UTC