Yoshiro Nakamatsu
Among Nakamatsu's early inventions is the Shoyu Churu Churu, a siphon pump used in the home to move soy sauce from large containers to smaller vessels for cooking and serving. His patented inventions include:
Based upon a patent issued in 1952, Nakamatsu claims to have invented the first floppy disk well before IBM's floppy disk patent was filed in 1969. However, what Nakamatsu patented in 1952 was a paper for optical sound player. In contrast to a floppy disk, this Nakamatsu patent discloses the use of printed paper for storage instead of the magnetic material of a floppy disk. It is not rewritable and lacks most elements of the IBM floppy disk patent. Since the paper was 'floppy' material, he claims he had invented the floppy disk (sometimes he uses the phrase "floppy media"); however, it should be noted that flexible magnetic recording media was well known prior to 1952, in tape and wire recording.
Disk pack
An early disk cartridge was a single hard disk platter encased in a protective plastic shell. When the removable cartridge was inserted into the "cartridge drive" peripheral device, the read/write heads of the drive could access the magnetic data storage surface of the platter through holes in the shell. The disk cartridge was a direct evolution from the disk pack drive, or the early hard drive. As the storage density improved, even a single platter would provide a useful amount of data storage space, with the benefit being easier to handle than a removable disk pack. An example of a cartridge drive is the IBM 2310, used on the IBM 1130. Disk cartridges were made obsolete by floppy disks.