<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve all heard about Gen Z\u2019s not knowing what the save icon symbolises as floppy disks are long gone \u2013 or are they?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe joke is, is that when a six-year-old girl runs up to her father with a floppy disk that she found somewhere, she said, \u2018Oh, look, Daddy, somebody 3D-printed the save icon,\u201d said Tom Persky, the owner of arguably the world\u2019s last bulk supplier of floppy disks in California in the United States.<\/p>\n
Persky receives new and used floppy disks from around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd here are a bunch of floppy disks and when we get them, we have no idea if they\u2019re new or used or what. So, we\u2019ll open this one up and sure enough here, used disks that we will reformat, put a fresh label on, and then hopefully resell,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Before they\u2019re resold, each floppy disk must be stripped of its data, which Persky does with his degausser, a machine with a giant magnet that removes all information from each disk.<\/p>\n
The 73-year-old ex-software developer says he has a solid customer base who need secure and reliable means to store information.<\/p>\n
Floppy disks: \u2018Reliable, stable and well-understood\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cFloppy disks are very reliable, very stable, a very well-understood way to get information in and out of a machine. Plus, they have the additional feature of not being very hackable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to him, some of his biggest customers are those in the embroidery, tool and dye business who need the disks for their manufacturing machines as well as the airline industry which still uses floppy disks for some of the avionics.<\/p>\n
Even now, his eyes light up as he reaches into a cupboard and pulls out a true relic of the computer age: the 8 inch floppy disk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a floppy disk from the 1970s. And we have literally thousands and thousands of these,\u201d said Persky holding up the disk to compare it to the traditional 3.5 inch disk for comparison.<\/p>\n
He is well aware one day he won\u2019t be selling 500 disks per day and will eventually have to put them in history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be here for as long as people continue to want to have these disks. But it\u2019s not forever,\u201d said Persky. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
!function(e,t,r){let n;if(e.getElementById(r))return;const a=e.getElementsByTagName(\u201cscript\u201d)[0];n=e.createElement(\u201cscript\u201d),n.id=r,n.defer=!0,n.src=\u201dhttps:\/\/playback.oovvuu.media\/player\/v1.js\u201d,a.parentNode.insertBefore(n,a)}(document,0,\u201doovvuu-player-sdk\u201d); We\u2019ve all heard about Gen Z\u2019s not knowing what the save icon symbolises as floppy disks are long gone \u2013 or are they? \u201cThe joke is, is that when a six-year-old girl runs up to her father with a floppy disk that she found somewhere, she said, \u2018Oh, look, Daddy, somebody 3D-printed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1234673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1234673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}