That is until the 1.2Megabyte (MB) size disks appeared in 1984 ... and new storage formats like USB flash drives and memory cards emerged, the floppy disk's reign waned in the mid-to-late 1990s.

In fact, Shugart himself left IBM and transitioned to Memorex in 1972, helping the company deliver the first commercially available read-write floppy disk drive (the Memorex 650). A hallmark of ...