The black and orange are 8" and 5.25" floppy disks. The blue one is a 3.5" diskette. There was also a 3" diskette that was widely used for instance by Amstrad. It was very similar to 3.5" with the built in shutter for protection of the disk.
But the official name for 3½ inch was “Micro diskette” ergo **diskette" was a short form adopted, and calling it floppy is IMO technically wrong.
There were several differences between a floppy and a diskette, that made the diskette superior in practical use, as mentioned the shutter made the diskette easier to handle, as it didn’t need to be taken in and out of sleeves when used, it was easier to transport in for instance a school bag, because of the more sturdy harder plastic, and the metal shutter is way more solit than the paper sleeve used for floppies. 3 and 3½" also had a tab for enabling write protection and removing it again indefinitely, unlike the clumsy taping over the notch on a 5.25" floppy.
There is no way 3" and 3.5" are called floppy, their correct name is diskette.
Obviously they are not hard disks, that’s even worse than calling them floppies.
But many people already back when they were at their height, misnamed diskettes as floppies, so the more accurate naming scheme never really stuck, and today diskette is called a floppy even on Wikipedia. 🤡
Similarly a drive for 3" and 3,5 inch diskettes is called a diskette drive not a floppy drive, which obviously is for floppies.
Not originally no, at least not here in Denmark in the mid 80’s. Nobody called them floppy among the people and dealers I knew, and I knew a lot of people who were computer enthusiasts. I also knew several dealers, since we used more than a thousand diskettes per month, to distribute software. I think the bad habit of using wrong terms didn’t really happen until the computer illiterate began to use computers too, either for work or for early internet.
People who called them floppy came later, and were mostly people that might as well have called them thingies.
The black and orange are 8" and 5.25" floppy disks. The blue one is a 3.5" diskette. There was also a 3" diskette that was widely used for instance by Amstrad. It was very similar to 3.5" with the built in shutter for protection of the disk.
But the official name for 3½ inch was “Micro diskette” ergo **diskette" was a short form adopted, and calling it floppy is IMO technically wrong.
There were several differences between a floppy and a diskette, that made the diskette superior in practical use, as mentioned the shutter made the diskette easier to handle, as it didn’t need to be taken in and out of sleeves when used, it was easier to transport in for instance a school bag, because of the more sturdy harder plastic, and the metal shutter is way more solit than the paper sleeve used for floppies. 3 and 3½" also had a tab for enabling write protection and removing it again indefinitely, unlike the clumsy taping over the notch on a 5.25" floppy.
There is no way 3" and 3.5" are called floppy, their correct name is diskette.
Obviously they are not hard disks, that’s even worse than calling them floppies.
But many people already back when they were at their height, misnamed diskettes as floppies, so the more accurate naming scheme never really stuck, and today diskette is called a floppy even on Wikipedia. 🤡
Similarly a drive for 3" and 3,5 inch diskettes is called a diskette drive not a floppy drive, which obviously is for floppies.
Diskettes were frequently called floppies by nearly everyone including manufacturers.
Not originally no, at least not here in Denmark in the mid 80’s. Nobody called them floppy among the people and dealers I knew, and I knew a lot of people who were computer enthusiasts. I also knew several dealers, since we used more than a thousand diskettes per month, to distribute software. I think the bad habit of using wrong terms didn’t really happen until the computer illiterate began to use computers too, either for work or for early internet.
People who called them floppy came later, and were mostly people that might as well have called them thingies.
99.99% of people in the US and UK did.