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IBM's 1971 invention, shrunk twice — to 5.25 inches, then 3.5 inches — until the 1.44 MB disk became the default on every 90s computer. That hard plastic shell with the sliding metal shutter, your homework labeled in marker, ferried between the school lab and home in a backpack pocket.
A stick the size of your thumb that held everything. By the mid-2000s, USB flash drives had killed the floppy disk, and everything moved on a lanyard: your homework, your music, your games. Losing one was a 2000s tragedy — the only copy of your essay, gone with the keychain.
The chunky blue disk that held a then-unthinkable 100 megabytes — seventy floppies in one satisfying clunk. For a few years every graphic designer, computer lab, and serious computer household had an Iomega Zip drive, and every Zip owner lived in quiet fear of the Click of Death.