"floppy disk"--why "floppy"?

[ANNE V. GILBERT]

To all:

> The early floppies that were used on big IBM mainframes were 8 inches
> square, much bigger than the later common (now obsolete) 5.25-inch ones,
and
> of course bigger than the now still used 3.5-inch ones in the hard plastic
> case.  These big 8-inch ones had the same flimsy plastic sleeve covering
the
> magnetic medium as the 5.25-inch.  Some of these early ones might well
have
> had paper sleeves.  In any case, since they were so big, relatively
> speaking, that they were pretty "floppy".
>
> Still, "flexy" would have been a nicer choice.  But too late now.

I used to work in a market research company when computers were first
becoming widespread, but before the Internet was even a gleam in anybody's
eye.  They had a special room for the computers, and they had these large
disks.  And yes, I was actually shown the disks.  And they *were* "floppy".
Also, at that time, the internal machinery, crude as it was compared to
internal machinery now(which is all "modular"), was called, collectively the
"hard drive", as opposed to the internal hard drive *disks* we have in
computers nowadays.
Anne G