The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk

A model of this put up initially appeared onTedium, Ernie Smith’s publication, which hunts for the tip of the lengthy tail.

If you ask the common individual what the corporate 3M does, odds are if they’ve a couple of grey hairs hanging out on their scalp, they may say that the corporate makes floppy disks. Now, this was as soon as true, however
for those who look on 3M’s personal web site, you will notice no point out of this legacy—it’s a agency that sells abrasive supplies, adhesive tapes, filters, movies, private protecting gear, and medical gear. (Younger individuals, in the event that they acknowledge 3M, it’s most likely as a result of of Post-it notes, or extra lately its N95 masks)

Floppies have had a surprisingly lengthy life—in January 2024,
Japan introduced it is going to now not require floppy-disk copies of authorities submissions. But 3M acquired out of the data-storage enterprise about 28 years in the past, when it transferred its floppy disk manufacturing to a spin-off known as Imation. Imation remains to be round, beneath the title Glassbridge Enterprises, however with a a lot smaller profile.

3M’s spin-off, Imation, continued producing floppy disks after 3M itself left the enterprise. IEEE Spectrum

Even with that stated, these gray-hairs will incessantly declare that of the numerous makers of floppies on the market, 3M made one of the best ones. Given that, I used to be curious to determine precisely why 3M turned probably the most memorable model in knowledge storage through the formative days of computing, and why it deserted the product.

How 3M Became a Key Innovator within the Production of Magnetic Data Storage

Now, to be clear, 3M didn’t invent magnetic storage—that was executed by Austro-German engineer
Fritz Pfleumer, in 1928. He created audio tape, a recording medium that began as broad strips of paper coated with iron-powder granules, and ultimately moved to less-fragile cellulose acetate with assist from what would change into one other huge title in floppy disks, BASF. At first, the innovation didn’t unfold exterior of Germany as a result of of World War II.

Nor was 3M the primary firm to popularize magnetic media—
that was Ampex, which commercialized the tape recorder within the late Forties. That was the purpose when magnetic tape was a serious innovation on the planet of music—one which, famously, Bing Crosby acquired to first as a result of he gave monetary assist to Ampex. Incidentally, Ampex’s later spinoff, Memorex, represented Silicon Valley’s first true startup.

“Of all the businesses 3M has shed over its 100 years, the two seminal decisions that people point to as most significant involved the sale of 3M’s Duplicating Products business to Harris Corporation in Atlanta, Georgia, and the spin-off of 3M’s data-storage and imaging-systems businesses in 1996 creating a new company called Imation in Oakdale, Minnesota…”

Before World War II, one firm did try to manufacture a tape recorder within the U.S. primarily based on Pfluemer’s magnetic-tape invention. That agency, the Brush Development Co.,
had developed a tool known as the Soundmirror, produced by a Hungarian inventor named Semi J. Begun, who was possible one thing of a competitor to Pfleumer: Also a German, he had moved to the United States and developed a steel-based magnetic tape. The invention was utilized by the U.S. army through the conflict, and the corporate revisited the thought instantly after. But, it wanted somebody to fabricate magnetic tape for it to make use of.

As creator David Morton famous in his 2006 ebook
Sound Recording: The Life Story of a Technology, 3M was one of the best-suited firms available on the market to assist Brush out. That’s as a result of the groundbreaking work that the corporate had executed to develop pressure-sensitive adhesive tape was an important factor of making magnetic tape efficient.

3M’s adhesive-tape know-how transferred readily to magnetic tape. 3M

Strangely sufficient, Richard Gurley Drew, the inventor of a lot of 3M’s tape know-how, was a musician—he performed banjo in a neighborhood orchestra—when he took a job with the corporate. He most likely didn’t notice he was inventing a key factor of Twentieth-century recording know-how when he noticed that auto physique retailers wanted a method to “mask off” areas of autos that had been being whittled down with sandpaper, however his remark would show helpful to the invention of masking tape.

In the mid-Fifties, 3M marketed its Scotch audio reel-to-reel tape.Audio Magazine/Internet Archive/Scotch

As Smithsonian Magazine notes, the formulation he developed, combining cabinetmaker’s glue with glycerin, proved to be simply the precise degree of easy-to-remove adhesive that it turned an out-and-out phenomenon. You may know his invention, developed in 1925, as Scotch Tape.

In 1930, he adopted it up with one other invention that was much more superb—tape constituted of cellophane, which by its nature was completely clear. Another 3M worker developed the tape dispenser, and the 2 innovations reshaped places of work the world over.

So, when Brush seemed to others to provide its recording medium, 3M was effectively positioned to assist out on account of magnetic tape’s similarity with its Scotch Tape. Brush ultimately moved to different producers, like Dupont. But the expertise led 3M to proceed creating metal-oxide tape know-how, resulting in the creation of the Scotch 111 reel-to-reel tape, which was one of the most well-liked sorts utilized in recording studios all through the Fifties, based on the
Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording.

I admittedly have lengthy had a fascination with these reel-to-reel tapes. A quantity of years in the past, again once I lived in Milwaukee, I discovered a pair of clean reel-to-reel tapes created by 3M utilizing the Scotch title. I purchased them from a junk retailer, and perhaps paid $2 for them. They managed to comply with me via three states and 5 cities, and now sit on
my deliberately organized pile of junk. Based on my evaluation of the container and the logotype it makes use of, they date to the mid-Nineteen Sixties or earlier. (No, I’ve not tried to document on them.)

I’ve owned this clean Scotch 150 reel-to-reel tape for practically 20 years. It is 50 to 60 years outdated. Ernie Smith

For years, 3M’s reel-to-reels had one of the strongest reputations within the music trade; they had been constructed to be of superhigh high quality. But you could be questioning, how did 3M make the leap from reel-to-reel tape to floppies? It appears like simply as unusual a leap as a masking tape firm creating reel-to-reel audio tape.

But, once more, it occurred.

How 3M’s Tapes Went From Music to Data

3M didn’t develop the floppy disk drive, both.
IBM did, and Shugart Associates additional improved it by making it sufficiently small for normal customers.

3M manufactured a signature 5.25-inch floppy disk. IEEE Spectrum

But 3M, a lot as with mechanical tape, was effectively positioned to enhance on it, leveraging its abilities with mechanical media within the budding computing trade. In a means, 3M got here to media manufacturing from the wrong way than its disk-selling competitor Memorex did. Memorex began with computer systems and steadily got here to develop and enhance tape-based know-how, which ultimately advanced into floppy disks. On the opposite hand, 3M began with the uncooked supplies and the manufacturing processes, and mixed these into computing’s biggest commodity merchandise, the floppy disk.

3M acquired into the floppy disk market across the
fall of 1973. It was not the one producer of disks on the market—some names from this period embrace Verbatim, Control Data, Dysan, and BASF. Most of these firms began with computing know-how—for instance, Dysan labored carefully with Shugart Associates on the 5.25-inch floppy. But 3M wasn’t alone in beginning with the uncooked supplies. BASF, a German chemical producer, has a considerably comparable company historical past and brand design to fellow thick-Helvetica fanatic 3M. (Though 3M clearly by no means related to the Nazis throughout World War II, so there’s that.)

3M branched out past customary floppy disks with a spread of magnetic-tape storage media.ComputerWorld/Google Books/3M

3M didn’t relaxation on its laurels with the floppy disk both, and tried to push the know-how additional, most notably with
Floptical disk know-how, which Jim Adkisson, who helped create the 5.25-inch floppy at Shugart Associates, developed within the Eighties. A partnership of 3M, Maxell, and Iomega created the Floptical disk, which may maintain 20 megabytes of knowledge on one thing that seemed quite a bit like a 3.5-inch floppy. Unfortunately the floptical disk flopped, shedding out to merchandise like Iomega’s iconic Zip drives.

3M additionally labored in additional specialised media, creating high-capacity optical disks that match into customary floppy and optical disk mechanisms, in addition to high-end tape drives meant for the server room fairly than your cassette participant.

In some ways, 3M was out entrance on one of a very powerful components of computing and was making big income from it. But by the tip of 1995, these days had been executed. What modified?

3M marketed its floppy disk as extra dependable than the competitors in no unsure phrases.

What Led 3M to Kick a Multibillion-Dollar Business to the Curb

By 1995, 3M’s magnetic-media arm had advanced right into a US $2.3 billion enterprise, based on
Time, which made it a big chunk of 3M’s general providing.

But at the moment, excessive know-how—
particularly client know-how—was beginning to appear to be a foul wager for legacy firms. This was across the identical interval that AT&T, nonetheless smarting from misadventures just like the EO Personal Communicator, spun off Bell Labs as Lucent Technologies.

3M’s story, in its personal phrases, suggests an identical disaster of tradition. In
A Century of Innovation, a ebook printed by the corporate in 2002, across the time of its 100-year anniversary, the corporate in contrast the creation of the spin-off, which it known as “the most wrenching decision in its history,” to that of its dedication eight years earlier to promote its Duplicating Products Division, which bought copying machines:

Of all the companies 3M has shed over its 100 years, the 2 seminal selections that individuals level to as most important concerned the sale of 3M’s Duplicating Products enterprise to Harris Corporation in Atlanta, Georgia, and the spin-off of 3M’s data-storage and imaging-systems companies in 1996 creating a brand new firm known as Imation in Oakdale, Minnesota, close to 3M headquarters. The two selections have a number of components in widespread—each concerned companies that 3M created and, in truth, ranked primary within the market for many years. They had been “homegrown” companies—largely created inside 3M and commercialized and constructed with the power of many inner sponsors and champions. The companies had been dangerous as a result of the merchandise had been primarily based on pioneering applied sciences. They not solely modified the idea of competitors; additionally they created all new, world industries. The companies had been extremely worthwhile for many years, and they represented a big share of the corporate’s whole annual revenues. They additionally produced many of 3M’s subsequent era of leaders.

So what occurred? Essentially, regardless of the corporate’s success working in industrial and skilled settings, doing issues for customers like producing videotapes, floppy disks, and cassettes meant transferring out of its consolation zone. These merchandise, initially developed for companies, grew so standard that they all of the sudden wanted to be accessible at each big-box retailer and drugstore alike, and, Post-its apart, retail was not a match for the sort of firm 3M was.

But extra considerably, different firms had been merely higher at undercutting, and per the company biography, that required some robust selections to be made:

While it bought its merchandise for little or no revenue, its competitors bought their merchandise for even much less. Even although the buyer enterprise had big development potential, 3M had little expertise with a low-cost, low-profit-margin mannequin.

The markings had been clear—exit this enterprise, although 3M invented it. To keep within the “dog fight” meant 3M needed to make investments monumental quantities of cash as a way to stay the low-cost producer, with no assurance that revenue margins ever would enhance. “Exiting it was the right decision,” [former senior vice president Al] Huber stated.

Seeing what got here after, it’s exhausting to disagree. While floppies had been nonetheless a big medium within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, it was apparent that they might not be sufficient capability for the subsequent era of knowledge hoarders. It would solely be a pair of years earlier than Apple would put the primary dagger within the coronary heart of the floppy disk with
the iMac, breaking with custom by releasing a private laptop in 1998 with no built-in floppy disk drive.

Imation carried on a floppy-disk advert marketing campaign via the late Nineteen Nineties.

That was a harbinger of what was to return. Within a decade of the choice, floppy drives, compact cassettes, and videotapes—the three key components of 3M’s transfer into consumer-driven magnetic media—had fallen by the wayside. Imation, nonetheless lively at this time, is owned by O-Jin Corp., a Korean know-how firm
that mainly purchased it for the its trademarked title.

Much like its one-time competitor Memorex, Imation is a know-how ghost kitchen. Its former company guardian 3M, in the meantime, has a market cap of $51.33 billion on the time of this writing.

3M’s Magnetic Legacy

In quite a bit of methods, I believe 3M’s persisting deep affiliation with computing, although the corporate left the sector a long time in the past, comes all the way down to the truth that it had a really recognizable brand design throughout its laptop heyday.

My first expertise with 3M was seeing its vibrant crimson brand on floppy disks utilized in lecture rooms with Apple IIe computer systems within the late Eighties and early ’90s. 3M was immediately recognizable amongst these answerable for creating the disks we wanted to load up Number Munchers and Commander Keen, and in consequence, its title is endlessly imprinted into the brains of retro-tech nerds the world over. It is a reminiscence that offers me heat emotions.

But 3M, for a quantity of causes, shouldn’t be an organization that carries quite a bit of goodwill with youthful generations. For instance, the corporate is carefully related to the manufacturing of a spread of chemical substances, together with PFOS (Perfluorooctane sulfonate), a key ingredient in Scotchguard and different waterproof supplies. It’s one of many PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl) substances which are believed to be dangerous to people.

The floppy disks that I and different elder millennials affiliate with an organization that was important to our youthful computing expertise are lengthy gone, shuttled away as a non-core enterprise for a large company that’s greatest described as an amalgamation of non-core companies loosely held collectively by a brand and backing in chemistry and uncooked supplies.