(Image source: Computer History Museum)
The first floppy disk drive, the 23FD "Minnow" flexible disk drive was shipped by IBM in 1971.
It was created as in an expensive system for loading micro-code into the controller of the IBM 3330 "Merin" Direct Access Storage Facility.
The 23FD "Minnow" reads 8-inch floppy disks, which had a capacity of 80kB. Don't laugh, because that was the equivalent of about 3,000 punched cards!
Five years later, IBM would increase the capacity of floppy disks by introducing the larger capacity 500kB Double Sided Single Density disks.
Another two years later in 1977, the company would break the 1MB mark with a 1.2MB floppy disk.
Fast forward to today and we have USB flash drives that are capable of storing a couple a few hundred GB worth of data.
Source: Storage Newsletter
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