The IBM Diskette and Diskette Drive

The diskette and diskette drive have had a major influence on data processing. They provide a low-cost, compact, high-performance solution to the need for a reusable magnetic medium and have largely replaced the punched card in many applications. Early applications were simple program-load functions. Today these have expanded to a wide range of medium exchange, information storage, and data processing applications. This paper examines the history of the development of these products within IBM. The discussion includes some of the alternatives considered and some of the problems encountered during these developments.