The marketplace for one of the iconic objects within the know-how trade is simply set to carry up for “one other 4 years” in line with floppy disc tycoon, Tom Persky. 

The US businessman, the self-described “final man standing” within the fading enterprise, runs floppydisk.com (opens in new tab), one of many final locations on the web you should buy the classic know-how.

Sony, the final firm to supply floppy discs, stopped manufacturing them in March 2011, and Perksy has been primarily operating his enterprise from a a million plus order made virtually a decade in the past.

Who nonetheless makes use of floppy disks?

Fairly lots of people apparently, a minimum of up till very just lately.

Boeing 747s, which had been solely retired in July 2020, continued to make use of 3.5-inch floppy discs to retailer up to date navigational databases.

Unsettlingly, it wasn’t till 2019 that the US navy stopped utilizing 8-inch floppy disks in a 1970s pc, the Strategic Automated Command and Management System, or SACCS, to obtain nuclear launch orders.

Japan particularly has discovered it exhausting to let go of its love of floppy discs, and they’re nonetheless fashionable for utilization by native authorities 

In a single space of Tokyo, Chiyoda Ward, they are not on observe to utterly take away floppy discs till their fiscal 12 months 2026 in line with reporting by Nikkei (opens in new tab).

An edict from the nation’s digital minister, Taro Kono,  declared “struggle” on floppy disks, in addition to CD roms, as a part of a wider marketing campaign to chop down on the use  of outdated tech.

However it’s unlikely we’ll see floppy discs shoot up in reputation ever once more.

Even the historically hardcore computing-friendly Linux neighborhood is taking steps to section out its floppy disc driver (opens in new tab), as “precise working bodily floppy {hardware} is getting exhausting to search out”.

If you would like to indulge your nostalgia for the as soon as nice know-how, you may head right here to learn Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Versatile Medium (opens in new tab), a e book the place Persky amongst different specialists, discuss concerning the medium. 

• Uninterested in placing up with classic know-how? Try our information to the most effective cloud storage

• Through The Register