Well, the days of 3 1/2" floppies have long since passed (for most of us), although I'm sure 5 1/4" floppies are still being used... somewhere. Anyway, now is as good a time as any to explain why 1.44MB floppies never have been that size, and never can be.
To start off, a 1.44MB floppy has a capacity of exactly 1,474,560B. Wait a minute! Isn't that 1.47MB? Well, yes, if you use SI units (1 megabyte = 10^6 bytes). Isn't that 1.41MB? Think those of you to whom a megabyte is 2^20 bytes. But hey! Under neither definition of a MB does the 3 1/2" floppy fit!
Why?
Whoever called it the 1.44MB floppy decided that a kB was 1024 bytes, while a MB was 1000kB (1,024,000 Bytes). Multiply by 1.44, and behold! 1,474,560 bytes.
Isn't that crazy?
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