With humor about 8-inch diskettes (in the 70s there were only such)

For the younger generation, even 3.5-inch floppy disks are already a wonder. Not to mention the 5.25-inch and the more eight-inch. For example, a friend of mine recently told me that his son, having seen a 3.5-inch floppy disk at home, issued: “Oh, dad! You printed a save icon on a 3D printer. Cool! ”He is true to the invention of much, this friend of mine, so it is possible that the story was invented. But what’s really credible is that the Pentagon still uses 8-inch floppy disks!

Yellow media are now broadcasting that Trump is going to increase the nuclear arsenal. At the same time, the “American Automated Strategic Nuclear Power Management System” (a division of the Pentagon) still operates under the control of IBM Series / 1 computers, a sample of the 1970s; and uses 8-inch floppy disks (which were produced from the 67th to the 84th year) as information carriers.

Maybe Trump should start strengthening nuclear weapons by moving to at least 5.25-inch floppy disks, keeping up with the times (albeit with a little by universal standards)?

Well, okay, with Trump, - let's talk better about 8-inch floppy disks

• 8-inch floppy disks saw the light in 1967. In public sale appeared in 1971. At first, their capacity was 81.6 kilobytes. The floppy disk contained as much data as 1000 punch cards.
• When the new 8-inch floppy disks of 240 kilobytes appeared, this seemed to be the limit of perfection. No joke, the floppy disk was placed as much data as 3000 punch cards!
• The latest modifications of 8-inch floppy disks have already accommodated 1.2 megabytes. Such a huge amount of data, which more than met the needs of the absolute majority of “computer” users, was equivalent to 15,000 punched cards!
• By the way, in the old 70s the capacity of all data carriers was measured by the number of punched cards that would be required to store an equivalent amount of data. Because everyone was familiar with punched cards, but very few with high-tech magnetic data carriers.

New life for boxes from half-inch computer tape

• To ensure compatibility of 8-inch diskettes with a more traditional storage medium (half-inch computer tape), there was a special device: “IBM 3747 Data Converter”. This unit, small by the standards of that time (in size something between a bedside table and a chest of drawers), “ate” up to 20 eight-inch floppy disks at a time, and “digested” them into a reel of half-inch computer tape.
• As floppy disks spread, the need for computer tape reels gradually began to disappear. At the same time, resourceful techies began to give their women signs of attention - donating exclusive gifts: convenient boxes for threads.

As the appearance of floppy disks took ordinary people

These were the distant 70s. Magnetic data carriers to ordinary people far from computers were not yet clear. They still thought exclusively in the category of punch cards. And therefore around “evil reels with a computer tape” and other magnetic data carriers, - various sparkling bikes were walking. Here are some of the most paranoid theses taken from a newspaper cartoon of that glorious time (the pickup is of course exaggerated, but generally indicative):

• You can always identify a computer by its magnetic tape reels. Tape cassettes are the same reels, but in miniature; they disguised themselves to deceive our vigilance. Diskettes are the same, but only mutated into another form.
• Any tape device is a computer. Even a reel to reel tape recorder is not really a tape recorder; this is a masked computer.
• The presence of a monitor, keyboard and system unit - it does not matter. But without a reel with magnetic tape (either the usual half-inch, or disguised as tape cassettes, or mutated into floppy disks), computers cannot exist.
• Why? Yes, because it is these reels and are computers! They stick to all those gray boxes that we, because of ignorance, consider computers, just to mislead us!
• At some point, very soon, all the reels with magnetic tape will be disconnected from these gray boxes, and will go “in free swimming”: they will start capturing the world, flying and rolling all over the planet.
• Have you ever seen a UFO? So this is where you think it comes from. These are precisely the very reels that through their carelessness hit our eyes ahead of time - before the centralized capture of our planet.

From the 70s - to today's : the aliens are still with us

Nothing like? Exactly the same stories now go about microchips: “People are chipped to have total control over them. With the help of a microchip, a person can instill the necessary thoughts, make them perform the necessary actions. And they are engaged in microchipping none other than aliens seeking to seize our planet. ”

Well, the perseverance of aliens is worthy of respect. With the help of magnetic tape reels, they did n’t manage to capture the world yesterday . Maybe it will turn out today - with the help of microchips? Wait and see.

Finally, a few more words about 8-inch floppy disks

• The capacity of a typical 8-inch floppy disk is 237.25 kilobytes. This capacity is quite enough to store a 15-second audio file.
• To transfer 32 gigabytes of information, you will need only 130 thousand 8-inch floppy disks. Well, or you can use a flash drive. Average flash drives today for just 32 gigabytes are calculated. But can we still follow the example of the Pentagon, and will we use 8-inch floppy disks?