8-inch, 5 ¹⁄₄-inch, and 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy disks

8-inch, 5 ¹⁄₄-inch (full height), and 3 ¹⁄₂-inch drives

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles. They are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD).

Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch (200 mm) media and later in 5.25-inch (133 mm) and 3.5-inch (89 mm) sizes, were an ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s well into the first decade of the 21st century.^[1]

By 2010, computer motherboards were rarely manufactured with floppy drive support; 3 ¹⁄₂" floppies could be used as an external USB drive, but 5 ¹⁄₄", 8", and non-standard drives could only be handled by old equipment.

While floppy disk drives still have some limited uses, especially with legacy industrial computer equipment, they have been superseded by data storage methods with much greater capacity, such as USB flash drives, portable external hard disk drives, optical discs, memory cards, and computer networks.

History[link]

8-inch disk drive with diskette (3 ¹⁄₂-inch disk for comparison)

3 ¹⁄₂-inch, high-density diskettes affixed with adhesive labels

The earliest floppy disks, developed in the late 1960s, were 8 inches (200 mm) in diameter;^[1] they became commercially available in 1971.^[2] These disks and associated drives were produced and improved upon by IBM and other companies such as Memorex, Shugart Associates, and Burroughs Corporation.^[3] The term "floppy disk" appeared in print as early as 1970,^[4] and although in 1973 IBM announced its first media as "Type 1 Diskette" the industry continued to use the terms "floppy disk" or "floppy".

In 1976, Shugart Associates introduced the first 5 ¹⁄₄-inch FDD. By 1978 there were more than 10 manufacturers producing such FDDs. There were competing floppy disk formats, with hard and soft sector versions and encoding schemes such as FM, MFM and GCR. The 5 1/4 inch format displaced the 8-inch one for most applications, and the hard sectored disk format disappeared. In 1984, IBM introduced the 1.2 MB dual sided floppy disk along with its AT model. IBM started using the 720 kB double density 3.5" microfloppy disk on its Convertible laptop computer and the 1.44 MB high density version with the PS/2 line in 1986. These disk drives could be added to older PC models. In 1988 IBM introduced a drive for 2.88 MB "DSED" diskettes in its top-of-the-line PS/2 models but this was a commercial failure.

Throughout the early 1980s, limitations of the 5 ¹⁄₄-inch format became clear. Originally designed to be more practical than the 8-inch format, it was itself too large; as the quality of recording media grew, data could be stored in a smaller area.^[5] A number of solutions were developed, with drives at 2, 2 ¹⁄₂, 3 and 3 ¹⁄₂ inches (and Sony's 90.0 mm × 94.0 mm disk) offered by various companies.^[5] They all shared a number of advantages over the old format, including a rigid case with a sliding write protection tab, protecting them from damage; the large market share of the 5 ¹⁄₄-inch format made it difficult for these new formats to gain significant market share.^[5] A variant on the Sony design, introduced in 1982 by a large number of manufacturers, was then rapidly adopted; by 1988 the 3 ¹⁄₂-inch was outselling the 5 ¹⁄₄-inch.^[6]

By the end of the 1980s, the 5 ¹⁄₄-inch disks had been superseded by the 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disks. By the mid-1990s, the 5 ¹⁄₄-inch drives had virtually disappeared as the 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disk became the predominant floppy disk. The advantages of the 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disk were its smaller size and its plastic case which provided better protection from dirt and other environmental risks.

Ubiquity[link]

Imation USB floppy drive, model 01946: an external drive that accepts high-density disks

Floppy disks became ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s in their use with personal computers and home computers to distribute software, transfer data, and create backups. Before hard disks became affordable, floppy disks were often used to store a computer's operating system (OS). Most home computers had a primary OS and BASIC stored as ROM, with the option of loading a more advanced disk operating system from a floppy disk. By the early 1990s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were an estimated five billion floppy disks in use.^[7] Then, distribution of larger packages was gradually replaced by CD-ROM and online distribution (for smaller programs). An attempt to continue the floppy disk was the SuperDisk in the late 1990s, with a capacity of 120 MB^[8] and backward compatible with standard 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppies; a format war briefly occurred between SuperDisk and other high density removable disc products, although ultimately flash memory, recordable CDs/DVDs, and online storage would render the matter moot. External USB-based floppy disk drives are still available; many modern systems provide firmware support for booting from such a drive.

Decline[link]

Mechanically incompatible higher-density disks were introduced, like the Iomega Zip disk. Adoption was limited by the competition between proprietary formats and the need to buy expensive drives for computers where the disks would be used. In some cases, failure in market penetration was exacerbated by release of higher-capacity versions of the drive and media not backward compatible with the original drives, dividing the users between new and old adopters. A chicken or the egg scenario ensued, with consumers wary of making costly investments into unproven and rapidly changing technologies, resulting in none of the technologies being able to prove themselves and stabilize their market presence. Recordable CDs with even greater capacity, compatible with existing infrastructure of CD-ROM drives, made the new floppy technologies redundant, their lack of reusability negated by their extremely low cost and countered by re-writeable CDs. Networking, advancements in flash-based devices and widespread adoption of USB provided another alternative that made optical storage obsolete for some purposes. The rise of file sharing and multi-megapixel digital photography encouraged the use of files larger than most 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disks could hold. Floppy disks were commonly used as sneakernet carriers for file transfer, but the broad availability of LANs and fast Internet connections provided a simpler and faster method of transferring such files. Other removable storage devices have advantages in both capacity and performance when network connections are unavailable or when networks are inadequate.

In 1991, Commodore introduced the CDTV, with a CD-ROM drive in place of the floppy drive. The kickstart of AmigaOS was stored in ROM as in other Amigas, meaning it didn't have to be installed via external media. Apple introduced the iMac in 1998 with a CD-ROM drive but no floppy drive; this made USB-connected floppy drives popular accessories as the iMac came without any writeable removable media device. This transition from standard floppies was relatively easy for Apple, since all Macintosh models originally designed to use a CD-ROM drive could boot and install their operating system from CD-ROM early on. By 2002 most manufacturers still provided Floppy Disk Drives as standard equipment to meet user demand for file-transfer and an emergency boot device as well as the general secure feeling of having the familiar device.^[9] Subsequently, enabled by the widespread support for USB flash drives and BIOS boot, manufacturers and retailers progressively reduced the availability floppy disk drives as standard equipment. In February 2003, Dell announced floppy drives would no longer be pre-installed on Dell Dimension home computers, although they were still available as a selectable option and purchasable as an aftermarket OEM add-on.^[10] On 29 January 2007, PC World stated that only 2% of the computers they sold contained built-in floppy disk drives; once present stocks were exhausted, no more standard floppies would be sold.^[11] In 2009, Hewlett-Packard stopped supplying standard floppy drives on business desktops.^{[citation needed]}

Use in the early 21st century[link]

A floppy hardware emulator, same size as a 3 ¹⁄₂ drive, provides a USB interface to the user.

Screenshot of the toolbar in OpenOffice.org, highlighting the Save icon, which depicts a floppy disk

Floppy disks are used for emergency boots in aging systems lacking support for other bootable media, and for BIOS updates since most BIOS and firmware programs can still be executed from bootable floppy disks. If BIOS updates fail or become corrupt, floppy drives can sometimes be used to perform a recovery. The music and theatre industries still use equipment requiring standard floppy disks (e.g. synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, sequencers, and lighting consoles). Industrial automation equipment such as programmable machinery and industrial robots may not have a USB interface; data and programs are then loaded from disks, damageable in industrial environments. This may not be replaced due to cost or requirement for continuous availability; existing software emulation and virtualization do not solve this problem because no operating system is present or a customized operating system is used that has no drivers for USB devices. Hardware floppy disk emulators can be made to interface floppy disk controllers to a USB port that can be used for flash drives; several manufacturers make such emulators.

For more than two decades, the floppy disk was the primary external writable storage device used. Most computing environments before the 1990s were non-networked and floppy disks were the primary means of transferring data between computers, a method known informally as sneakernet. Unlike hard disks, floppy disks are handled and seen; even a novice user can identify a floppy disk. Because of these factors, a picture of a 3 ¹⁄₂" floppy disk has become a metaphor for saving data. The floppy disk symbol is still used by software on user interface elements related to saving files, such as the release of Microsoft Office 2010, even though such disks are increasingly obsolete.^[12]

Design[link]

Internal parts of a 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy disk. 1) A hole that indicates a high-capacity disk. 2) The hub that engages with the drive motor. 3) A shutter that protects the surface when removed from the drive. 4) The plastic housing. 5) A polyester sheet reducing friction against the disk media as it rotates within the housing. 6) The magnetic coated plastic disk. 7) A schematic representation of one sector of data on the disk; the tracks and sectors are not visible on actual disks. The write protection tab (unlabeled) is upper left.

Structure[link]

The 5 ¹⁄₄-inch disk has a large circular hole in the center for the drive's spindle and a small oval aperture in both sides of the plastic to allow the drive's heads to read and write data; the magnetic medium can be spun by rotating it from the middle hole. A small notch on the right of the disk identifies that it is writable, detected by a mechanical switch or phototransistor above it; if it is not present, the disk is read-only. Punch devices were sold to convert read-only disks to writable ones and enable writing on the unused side of single sided disks; such modified disks became known as flippy disks. Tape may be used over the notch to protect writable disks from unwanted writing. Oddly: this arrangement was the converse of the system used on 8 inch floppy discs where the notch had to be covered before the disc could be written to.

Another LED/photo-transistor pair located near the center of the disk detects the index hole once per rotation in the magnetic disk; it is used to detect the angular start of each track and whether or not the disk is rotating at the correct speed. Early 8-inch and 5 ¹⁄₄-inch disks had physical holes for each sector and were termed hard sectored disks. Later soft sectored disks had only one index hole, and sector position was determined by the disk controller or low level software from patterns marking the start of a sector. Generally, the same drives were used to read and write both types of disks, with only the disks and disk controllers differing. Some operating systems utilizing soft sectors, such as Apple DOS, did not use the index hole; the drives designed for such systems often lacked the corresponding sensor; this was mainly a hardware cost-saving measure.

Inside the disk are two layers of fabric, with the medium sandwiched in the middle. The fabric is designed to reduce friction between the medium and the outer casing, and catch particles of debris abraded off the disk to keep them from accumulating on the heads. The outer casing is usually a one-part sheet, double-folded with flaps glued or spot-welded together. The 8-inch disk had read-only logic that was the reverse of the 5 ¹⁄₄-inch disk, with the slot on the side having to be taped over to allow writing.

The core of the 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disk is the same as the other two disks, but the front has only a label and a small aperture for reading and writing data, protected by the slider - a spring-loaded metal or plastic cover, pushed to the side on entry into the drive. Rather than having a hole in the center, it has a metal hub which mates to the spindle of the drive. Typical 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disk magnetic coating materials are:^[13]

• DD: 2 µm magnetic iron oxide
• HD: 1.2 µm cobalt doped iron oxide
• ED: 3 µm Barium ferrite

Two holes at the bottom left and right indicate whether the disk is write-protected and whether it is high-density; these holes are spaced as far apart as the holes in punched A4 paper, allowing write-protected high-density floppies to be clipped into standard ring binders. A notch at top right ensures that the disk is in the correct orientation and an arrow at top left indicating direction of insertion. The drive usually has a button that when pressed ejects the disk with varying degrees of force, the discrepancy due to the ejection force provided by the spring of the slider cover. In IBM PC compatibles, a floppy disk may be inserted or ejected manually at any time. The drive has a 'change switch' that detects when a disc is ejected or inserted. Failure of this mechanical switch is a common source of disc corruption if a disc is changed and the drive (and hence the operating system) fails to notice.

One of the chief usability problems of the floppy disk is its vulnerability; even inside a closed plastic housing, the disk medium is highly sensitive to dust, condensation and temperature extremes. As with all magnetic storage, it is vulnerable to magnetic fields. Blank disks have been distributed with an extensive set of warnings, cautioning the user not to expose it to dangerous conditions. Disks must not be roughly treated or removed from the drive while the magnetic media is still spinning, since doing so is likely to cause damage to the disk, drive head, or stored data. On the other hand, the 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy has been lauded for its mechanical usability by HCI expert Donald Norman:^[14]

"A simple example of a good design is the 3½-inch magnetic diskette for computers, a small circle of "floppy" magnetic material encased in hard plastic. Earlier types of floppy disks did not have this plastic case, which protects the magnetic material from abuse and damage. A sliding metal cover protects the delicate magnetic surface when the diskette is not in use and automatically opens when the diskette is inserted into the computer. The diskette has a square shape: there are apparently eight possible ways to insert it into the machine, only one of which is correct. What happens if I do it wrong? I try inserting the disk sideways. Ah, the designer thought of that. A little study shows that the case really isn't square: it's rectangular, so you can't insert a longer side. I try backward. The diskette goes in only part of the way. Small protrusions, indentations, and cutouts, prevent the diskette from being inserted backward or upside down: of the eight ways one might try to insert the diskette, only one is correct, and only that one will fit. An excellent design."

Operation[link]

The spindle motor from a 3 ¹⁄₂-inch unit

The read-write head from a 3 ¹⁄₂-inch unit

How the read-write head is applied on the floppy

Visualization of magnetic information on Floppy Disk (image recorded with CMOS-MagView)

A spindle motor in the drive rotates the magnetic medium at a certain speed, while a stepper motor-operated mechanism moves the magnetic read/write head(s) along the surface of the disk. Both read and write operations require the media to be rotating and the head to contact the disk media, an action accomplished by a "disk load" solenoid.^[15] To write data, current is sent through a coil in the head as the media rotates. The head's magnetic field aligns the magnetic particles directly below the head on the media. When the current is reversed the particles align in the opposite direction encoding the data digitally. To read data, the magnetic particles in the media induce a tiny voltage in the head coil as they pass under it. This small signal is amplified and sent to the floppy disk controller, which converts the streams of pulses from the media into data, checks it for errors, and sends it to the host computer system.

A blank "unformatted" diskette has a coating of magnetic oxide with no magnetic order to the particles. During formatting, the particles are aligned forming a pattern of magnetized tracks, each broken up into sectors, enabling the controller to properly read and write data. The tracks are concentric rings around the center, with spaces between tracks where no data is written; gaps with padding bytes are provided between the sectors and at the end of the track to allow for slight speed variations in the disk drive, and to permit better interoperability with disk drives connected to other similar systems. Each sector of data has a header that identifies the sector location on the disk. A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is written into the sector headers and at the end of the user data so that the disk controller can detect potential errors. Some errors are soft and can be resolved by automatically re-trying the read operation; other errors are permanent and the disk controller will signal a failure to the operating system if multiple attempts to read the data still fail.

After a disk is inserted, a catch or lever at the front of the drive is manually lowered to prevent the disk from accidentally emerging, engage the spindle clamping hub, and in two-sided drives, engage the second read/write head with the media. In some 5 ¹⁄₄-inch drives, insertion of the disk compresses and locks an ejection spring which partially ejects the disk upon opening the catch or lever. This enables a smaller concave area for the thumb and fingers to grasp the disk during removal. Newer 5 ¹⁄₄-inch drives and all 3 ¹⁄₂-inch drives automatically engage the spindle and heads when a disk is inserted, doing the opposite with the press of the eject button. On Apple Macintosh computers with built-in floppy drives, the ejection button is replaced by software controlling an eject motor which only does so when the operating system no longer needs to access the drive. The user could drag the image of the floppy drive to the trash can on the desktop to eject the disk. The first such drives were the slim "Twiggy" drives of the late Apple Lisa. In the case of a power failure or drive malfunction, a loaded disk can removed manually by inserting a straightened paper clip into a small hole at the drive's front panel, just as one would do with a CD-ROM drive in a similar situation. External 3 ¹⁄₂-inch drives from Apple were equipped with eject buttons; the button was ignored when the drive was plugged into a Mac, but not if the drive was used with an Apple II, as ProDOS did not support software-controlled ejection. Some other computer designs, such as the Commodore Amiga, monitor for a new disk continuously and have button ejection mechanisms.

Sizes[link]

Different sizes of floppy disks are fundamentally incompatible, and disks can fit only one size of drive. Drives with 3 ¹⁄₂-inch and 5¼-inch slots were available during the transition period between the sizes, but they contained two separate drive mechanisms. In addition, there are many subtle, usually software-driven incompatibilities between the two. 5 ¹⁄₄-inch disks formatted for use with Apple II computers would be unreadable and treated as unformatted on a Commodore. As computer platforms began to form, attempts were made at interchangeability. For example, the "Superdrive" included from the Macintosh SE to the Power Macintosh G3 could read, write and format IBM PC-format 3½-inch disks, but few IBM-compatible computers had drives that did the reverse. 8-inch, 5 ¹⁄₄-inch and 3 ¹⁄₂-inch drives were manufactured in a variety of sizes, most to fit standardized drive bays. Alongside the common disk sizes were non-classical sizes for specialized systems.

8-inch floppy disk[link]

The first floppy disk was 8 inches in diameter, and was protected by a flexible plastic jacket. IBM used this size as a way of loading microcode into mainframe processors, and the original 8 inch disk was not field-writeable. Rewriteable disks and drives became useful. Early microcomputers used for engineering, business, or word processing often used one or more 8 inch disk drives for removable storage; the CP/M operating system was developed for microcomputers with 8 inch drives.

An 8-inch disk could store about a megabyte; many microcomputer applications didn't need that much capacity on one disk, so a smaller size disk with lower-cost media and drives was feasible. The 5 1/4 inch drive succeeded the 8 inch size in many applications, and developed to about the same storage capacity as the original 8 inch size, using higher-density media and recording techniques.

[edit] 5 ¹⁄₄-inch floppy disk

Uncovered 5 ¹⁄₄-inch disk mechanism with disk inserted. The edge of the disk with the opening for the medium was inserted first, then the lever was turned to close the mechanism and engage the drive motor and heads

The head gap of an 80-track high-density (1.2 MB in the MFM format) 5 ¹⁄₄-inch drive is shorter than that of a 40-track double-density (360 kB) drive but can format, read and write 40-track disks well provided the controller supports double stepping or has a switch to do such a process. A blank 40-track disk formatted and written on an 80-track drive can be taken to its native drive without problems, and a disk formatted on a 40-track drive can be used on an 80-track drive. Disks written on a 40-track drive and then updated on an 80 track drive become unreadable on any 40-track drives due to track width incompatibility. The disks would work on both machines, with RadioShack TRS-80 Model I computers using one side and the Apple II machines the other, regardless available software which could make sense of the other format^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}. Double-sided disks could be used in drives for single-sided disks, one side at a time, by turning them over (flippy disks); more expensive dual-head drives which could read both sides without turning over were later produced, and later became used universally. Disks sold as single-sided had a magnetic coating to the same specification, but not of guaranteed quality, on both sides so that they were symmetrical and would not warp; if a notch was cut to disable write-protection of the reverse the coating was often of sufficiently good quality to use both sides.

A disk notcher used to convert single-sided 5.25-inch diskettes to double-sided

[edit] 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy disk ("Microfloppy")

A 3 ¹⁄₂-inch 2.88 MB floppy disk drive. This capacity was never common, but the more common 1.44 MB drives looked almost identical.

3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy disk were produced with a capacity of 720 KB, followed by what became the most common format, 1.44 MB. All disks had a rectangular hole which, if obstructed, write-enabled the disk. 1.44 MB disks had another hole which identified them as being of that capacity.

In IBM-compatible PCs, the three densities of 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy disks are backwards-compatible: higher density drives can read, write and format lower density media. It is physically possible to format a disk at the wrong density, although it will not work properly. Fresh disks manufactured as high density can theoretically be formatted at double density only if no information has been written on the disk in high density, or the disk has been thoroughly demagnetized with a bulk eraser, as the magnetic strength of a high density record is stronger and overrides lower density, remaining on the disk and causing problems.

Writing at different densities than disks were intended for, sometimes by altering or drilling holes, was possible but deprecated.

The holes on the right side of a 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disk can be altered as to make some disk drives and operating systems treat the disk as one of higher or lower density, for bidirectional compatibility or economical reasons. Possible modifications include:^[16][17] Some computers, e.g. the PS/2 and Acorn Archimedes, ignored these holes altogether.^[18]

It is possible to make a 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy disk drive be recognized by a system as a 5 ¹⁄₄-inch 360 kB or 1200 kB drive, and to read and write disks with the same number of tracks and sectors as those disks; this had some application in data exchange with obsolete CP/M systems.^{[citation needed]}

Other sizes[link]

Other smaller floppy size were proposed, especially for portable or pocket-sized devices that needed a smaller storage device. 3" discs similar in construction to 3 ¹⁄₂" were manufactured and used for a time, particularly by Amstrad computers and word processors. A 2-inch nominal size was introduced for compact pocket computers and was used with some electronic musical instrument controllers. Neither of these sizes became popular in personal computers.

Sizes, performance and capacity[link]

Floppy disk size is often referred to in inches, even in countries using metric and though the size is defined in metric. The ANSI specification of 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disks is entitled in part "90 mm (3.5 in)" though 90 mm is closer to 3.54 inches.^[19] Formatted capacities are generally set in terms of kilobytes and megabytes.

A box of about 80 floppy disks together with a USB memory stick capable of holding over 130 times as much data as the whole box of disks put together.

Data is generally written to floppy disks in sectors (angular blocks) and tracks (concentric rings at a constant radius). For example, the HD format of 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy disks uses 512 bytes per sector, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side and two sides, for a total of 1,474,560 bytes per disk.^[32] Some disk controllers can vary these parameters at the user's request, increasing storage on the disk, although they may not be able to be read on machines with other controllers. For example, Microsoft applications were often distributed on 3 ¹⁄₂-inch 1.68 MB DMF disks formatted with 21 sectors instead of 18; they could still be recognized by a standard controller. On the IBM PC, MSX and most other microcomputer platforms, disks were written using a Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) format,^[31] with the disk spinning at a constant speed and the sectors hold the same amount of information on each track regardless of radial location.

This was not the most efficient way to use the disk surface with available drive electronics;^{[citation needed]} because the sectors have constant angular size, the 512 bytes in each sector are compressed more near the disk's center. A more space-efficient technique would be to increase the number of sectors per track toward the outer edge of the disk, from 18 to 30 for instance, thereby keeping constant the amount of physical disk space used for storing each sector; an example is zone bit recording. Apple implemented this in early Macintosh computers by spinning the disk slower when the head was at the edge, while maintaining the data rate, allowing 400 kB of storage per side and an extra 160 kB on a double-sided disk.^{[citation needed]} This higher capacity came with a disadvantage: the format used a unique drive mechanism and control circuitry, meaning that Mac disks could not be read on other computers. Apple eventually reverted to constant angular velocity on HD floppy disks with their later machines, still unique to Apple as they supported the older variable-speed formats.

Disk formatting is usually done by a utility program supplied by the computer OS manufacturer; generally, it sets up a file storage directory system on the disk, and initializes its sectors and tracks. Areas of the disk unusable for storage due to flaws can be locked (marked as "bad sectors") so that the operating system does not attempt to use them. This was time consuming so many environments had quick formatting which skipped the error checking process. When floppy disks were often used, disks pre-formatted for popular computers were sold. A formatted floppy disk does not include the sector and track headings of an unformatted disk; the difference in storage between them depends on the drive's application. Floppy disk drive and media manufacturers specify the unformatted capacity (for example, 2 MB for a standard 3 ¹⁄₂-inch HD floppy). It is implied that this should not be exceeded, since doing so will most likely result in performance problems. DMF was introduced permitting 1.68 MB to fit onto an otherwise standard 3 ¹⁄₂-inch disk; utilities then appeared allowing disks to be formatted as such.

Mixtures of decimal prefixes and binary sector sizes require care to properly calculate total capacity. Whereas semiconductor memory naturally favors powers of two (size doubles each time an address pin is added to the integrated circuit), the capacity of a disk drive is the product of sector size, sectors per track, tracks per side and sides (which in hard disk drives can be greater than 2). Although other sector sizes have been known in the past, formatted sector sizes are now almost always set to powers of two (256 bytes, 512 bytes, etc.), and in some cases, disk capacity is calculated as multiples of the sector size rather than in just bytes, leading to a combination of decimal multiples of sectors and binary sector sizes. For example, 1.44 MB 3 ¹⁄₂-inch HD disks have the "M" prefix peculiar to their context, coming from their capacity of 2,880 512-byte sectors (1,440 kB), inconsistent with either a decimal megabyte nor a binary mebibyte (MiB). Hence, these disks hold 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB. Usable data capacity is a function of the disk format used, which in turn is determined by the FDD controller and its settings. Differences between such formats can result in capacities ranging from approximately 1,300 to 1760 kB (1.80 MB) on a "standard" 3 ¹⁄₂-inch high density floppy (and up to nearly 2 MB with utilities such as 2MGUI). The highest capacity techniques require much tighter matching of drive head geometry between drives, something not always possible and unreliable. For example, the LS-240 drive supports a 32 MB capacity on standard 3 ¹⁄₂-inch HD disks,^{[citation needed]} but it is, however, a write-once technique, and requires its own drive.

The raw maximum transfer rate of 3 ¹⁄₂-inch HD floppy drives and interfaces, disregarding overheads, is as much as 1000 kilobit/s, or approximately 83% that of single-speed CDROM (71% of audio CD). This represents the speed of raw data bits moving under the read head; however, because of the very high amount of overhead in the system (use of soft sectors with headers, sync issues preventing sequential reads of an entire 18-sector track in a single rotation, etc.), the actual user data read/write speed is much lower. In fact, a DSHD diskette formatted with an efficient non-sequential (interleaved or "twist") sector layout could sync and read an average of only slightly more than three double-sided pairs of 512-byte sectors per 0.2s revolution, or a little over 15 sectors/second, for an effective data rate of approximately 125 kbit/s. At this speed, a single, disk-filling file would take a good 90 seconds to transfer; smaller and/or fragmented files further reduced transfer speed because of the slow head seek speed and the requirement to re-read the FAT from Track 0 along with any folder data, as removable media is rarely cached. Unusually, when compared to hard disks, optical drives and archive tapes, the floppy disk standard proper did not receive any further successful speed or capacity upgrades throughout its period of relevance, from the mid-80s introduction of DSHD through to its eventual death more than 20 years later.

However, some developments did seek to improve this, but with limited success. Double-sided extended-density (DSED) 3 ¹⁄₂-inch floppy disks, introduced by Toshiba in 1987 and adopted by IBM on the PS/2 in 1994, doubled the number of sectors per track, thereby providing double the data rate and capacity of conventional DSHD 3 ¹⁄₂-inch drives.^[31] Although it was not enabled by default, both the MSDOS/Windows 3.1 "Smartdrive" caching TSR and the system cache of later Windows versions can be configured to cache removable drives, including floppy disks. Similarly, some USB floppy drives use caching to increase performance while being built from standard speed drives; alternatively, the X10 accelerated floppy drive was an attempt to physically increase floppy performance by increasing spindle RPM.

More successfully, a number of (typically QIC-standard) tape-based backup drives that interfaced via the floppy drive controller were developed and sold by manufacturers such as Travan and Iomega. These made better use of the available bandwidth, and eventually pushed the 500/1000 kbit/s limits of standard (DD/HD) motherboard floppy disk controllers; higher end models could make use of the 2000 kbit/s bandwidth of DSED controllers, and plug-in "high speed" adapter cards were offered for PCs lacking this capability. Though inadequate by modern standards, their speed was competitive with early CD recorders and Zip drives, and was sufficient for overnight backups of a contemporary home or small office users' hard drive.

See also[link]

• dd (Unix)
• Disk image
• Don't Copy That Floppy
• Semi-virtual diskette

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Weyhrich, Steven (2005). "The Disk II": A detailed essay describing one of the first commercial floppy disk drives (from the Apple II History website)
• Immers, Richard; Neufeld, Gerald G. (1984). Inside Commodore DOS. The Complete Guide to the 1541 Disk Operating System. DATAMOST, Inc & Reston Publishing Company, Inc. (Prentice-Hall). ISBN 0-8359-3091-2.
• Englisch, Lothar; Szczepanowski, Norbert (1984). The Anatomy of the 1541 Disk Drive. Grand Rapids, MI: Abacus Software (translated from the original 1983 German edition, Düsseldorf: Data Becker GmbH). ISBN 0-916439-01-1.
• Hewlett Packard: 9121D/S Disc Memory Operator's Manual; Printed 1 September 1982; Part No. 09121-90000

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Floppy disk

• Programming Floppy Disk Controllers
• HowStuffWorks: How Floppy Disk Drives Work
• Computer Hope: Information about computer floppy drives
• NCITS (mention of ANSI X3.162 and X3.171 floppy standards)
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James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver; a new novel, written by William Boyd, is planned for release in 2013.^[1] Additionally, Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.

The fictional British Secret Service agent has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip and video game formats as well as being used in the longest running and the second-highest grossing film franchise to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2012, there have been twenty two films in the Eon Productions series, with a twenty third, Skyfall, due for release on 26 October 2012. The film will star Daniel Craig in his third portrayal of Bond: he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent productions of Bond films, Casino Royale, a 1967 spoof, and Never Say Never Again, a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, Thunderball.

The films are renowned for a number of features, including the musical accompaniment, with the theme songs to the films having picked up Academy Award nominations on several occasions. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns and the gadgets he is supplied with by Q Branch.

Publication history[link]

Creation and inspiration[link]

As the central figure for his works, Ian Fleming created the fictional character of James Bond, an intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond was also known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander.

Name

Fleming took the name for his character from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies; Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist’s wife that "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born".^[2] He further explained that:

When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument...when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, (James Bond) is the dullest name I ever heard.

—Ian Fleming, The New Yorker, 21 April 1962^[3]

On another occasion Fleming said: "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, "James Bond" was much better than something more interesting, like "Peregrine Carruthers". Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department."^[4]

Inspiration

Fleming based his fictional creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war".^[5] Among those types were his brother, Peter, who had been involved in behind the lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war.^[6] Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job and Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale.^[5]

Hoagy Carmichael—Fleming's view of James Bond.

Tastes

Fleming also endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs and using the same brand of toiletries.^[7] Bond's tastes are also often taken from Fleming’s own as was his behaviour,^[8] with Bond's love of golf and gambling mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his espionage career and all other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.^[5]

Looks

Fleming decided Bond should look a little like both the American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself^[9] and in Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless." Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch Officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is "certainly good-looking… Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold."^[9]

Background

It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, to give Bond both a sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories.^[10] In a fictional obituary, purportedly published in The Times, Bond's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from Yverdon, Switzerland.^[11] Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007, gives Bond a birth date on 11 November 1920,^[12] while a study by John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921.^[13]

Novels and related works[link]

Ian Fleming novels[link]

Goldeneye, in Jamaica, where Fleming wrote all the Bond novels.^[14]

Whilst serving in the Naval Intelligence Division, Fleming had planned to become an author^[15] and had told a friend, "I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories."^[5] On 17 February 1952, he began writing his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica,^[16] where he wrote all his Bond novels, during the months of January and February each year.^[17] He started the story shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, in order to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials.^[18]

After completing the manuscript for Casino Royale, Fleming showed the manuscript to his friend (and later editor) William Plomer to read. Plomer liked it and submitted it to the publishers, Jonathan Cape, who did not like it as much. Cape finally published it in 1953 on the recommendation of Fleming's older brother Peter, an established travel writer.^[17] Between 1953 and 1966, two years after his death, twelve novels and two short-story collections were published, with the last two books – The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights – published posthumously.^[19] All the books were published in the UK through Jonathan Cape.

Post-Fleming novels[link]

After Fleming's death a continuation novel, Colonel Sun, was written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham) and published in 1968.^[34] Amis had already written a literary study of Fleming's Bond novels in his 1965 workThe James Bond Dossier.^[35] Although novelizations of two of the Eon Productions Bond films appeared in print, James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker, both written by screenwriter Christopher Wood,^[36] the series of novels did not continue until the 1980s. In 1981, thriller writer John Gardner picked up the series with Licence Renewed.^[37] Gardner went on to write sixteen Bond books in total; two of the books he wrote – Licence to Kill and GoldenEye – were novelizations of Eon Productions films of the same name. Gardner moved the Bond series into the 1980s, although he retained the ages of the characters as they were when Fleming had left them.^[38] In 1996, Gardner retired from writing James Bond books due to ill health.^[39]

In 1996, American author Raymond Benson became the author of the Bond novels. Benson had previously been the author of The James Bond Bedside Companion, first published in 1984.^[54] By the time he moved on to other, non-Bond related projects in 2002, Benson had written six Bond novels, three novelizations and three short stories.^[55]

After a gap of six years, Sebastian Faulks was commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new Bond novel, which was released on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth.^[65] The book—titled Devil May Care—was published in the UK by Penguin Books and by Doubleday in the US.^[66] American writer Jeffery Deaver was then commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to produce Carte Blanche, which was published on 26 May 2011.^[67] The book updated Bond into a post 9/11 agency, independent of MI5 or MI6.^[68]

Young Bond[link]

The Young Bond series of novels was started by Charlie Higson^[69] and, between 2005 and 2009, five novels and one short story were published.^[70] The first Young Bond novel, SilverFin was also adapted and released as a graphic novel on 2 October 2008 by Puffin Books.^[71]

The Moneypenny Diaries[link]

The Moneypenny Diaries are a trilogy of novels chronicling the life of Miss Moneypenny, M's personal secretary. The novels are penned by Samantha Weinberg under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook, who is depicted as the book's "editor".^[79] The first instalment of the trilogy, subtitled Guardian Angel, was released on 10 October 2005 in the UK.^[80] A second volume, subtitled Secret Servant was released on 2 November 2006 in the UK, published by John Murray.^[81] A third volume, subtitled Final Fling was released on 1 May 2008.^[82]

Adaptations[link]

Television[link]

In 1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 ($8,654 in 2012 dollars^[86]) to adapt his novel Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure as part of its Climax! series.^[87] The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as "Card Sense" James 'Jimmy' Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre.^[88] The novel was adapted for American audiences to show Bond as an American agent working for "Combined Intelligence", while the character Felix Leiter—American in the novel—became British onscreen and was renamed "Clarence Leiter".^[89]

In 1973 a BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero featured Christopher Cazenove playing a number of such title characters (e.g. Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond). The documentary included James Bond in dramatised scenes from Goldfinger—notably featuring 007 being threatened with the novel's circular saw, rather than the film's laser beam—and Diamonds Are Forever.^[90] In 1991 a TV cartoon series James Bond Jr. was produced with Corey Burton in the role of Bond's nephew, also called James Bond.^[91]

Radio[link]

In 1956, the novel Moonraker was adapted for broadcast on South African radio, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond.^[92] According to The Independent, "listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination".^[93]

The BBC have adapted three of the Fleming novels for broadcast: in 1990, You Only Live Twice was adapted into a 90 minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond. The production was repeated a number of times between 2008 and 2011.^[94] On 24 May 2008, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation of Dr. No. Actor Toby Stephens, who played Bond villain Gustav Graves in the Eon Productions version of Die Another Day, played James Bond, while Dr. No was played by David Suchet.^[95] Following the success of Dr. No, a second Bond story was adapted and on 3 April 2010, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Goldfinger with Toby Stephens again playing Bond.^[96] Sir Ian McKellen was Goldfinger and Stephens' Die Another Day co-star Rosamund Pike played Pussy Galore. The play was adapted from Fleming's novel by Archie Scottney and was directed by Martin Jarvis.^[97]

Comics medium[link]

In 1957, the Daily Express approached Ian Fleming to adapt his stories into comic strips, offering him £1,500 per novel and a share of takings from syndication.^[98] After initial reluctance, Fleming, who felt the strips would lack the quality of his writing, agreed.^[99] To aid the Daily Express in illustrating Bond, Fleming commissioned an artist to create a sketch of how he believed James Bond looked. The illustrator, John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to give him a more masculine look.^[100] The first strip, Casino Royale was published from 7 July 1958 to 13 December 1958^[101] and was written by Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky.^[102]

Most of the Bond novels and short stories have since been adapted for illustration, as well as Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun; the works were written by Henry Gammidge or Jim Lawrence with Yaroslav Horak replacing McClusky as artist in 1966.^[101] After the Fleming and Amis material had been adapted, original stories were produced, continuing in the Daily Express and Sunday Express until May 1977.^[100]

Several comic book adaptations of the James Bond films have been published through the years: at the time of Dr. No's release in October 1962, a comic book adaptation of the screenplay, written by Norman J. Nodel, was published in Britain as part of the Classics Illustrated anthology series.^[103] It was later reprinted in the United States by DC Comics as part of its Showcase anthology series, in January 1963. This was the first American comic book appearance of James Bond and is noteworthy for being a relatively rare example of a British comic being reprinted in a fairly high-profile American comic. It was also one of the earliest comics to be censored on racial grounds (some skin tones and dialogue were changed for the American market).^[104][103]

With the release of the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, Marvel Comics published a two-issue comic book adaptation of the film.^[105][106] When Octopussy was released in the cinemas in 1983, Marvel published an accompanying comic;^[103] Eclipse also produced a one-off comic for Licence to Kill, although Timothy Dalton refused to allow his likeness to be used.^[107] New Bond stories were also drawn up and published from 1989 onwards through Marvel, Eclipse Comics and Dark Horse Comics.^[103][106]

Films[link]

The Eon Productions films[link]

In 1962 Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and American Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli released the first cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No, featuring Sean Connery as 007.^[108] Connery starred in a further four films before leaving the role after You Only Live Twice,^[109] which was taken up by George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service.^[110] Lazenby left the role after just one appearance and Connery was tempted back for his last Eon-produced film Diamonds Are Forever.^[111]

In 1973, Roger Moore was appointed to the role of 007 for Live and Let Die and played Bond a further six times over twelve years before being replaced by Timothy Dalton for two films. After a six year hiatus, during which a legal wrangle threatened Eon's productions of the Bond films,^[112] Irish actor Pierce Brosnan was cast as Bond in GoldenEye, released in 1995; he remained in the role for a total of four films, before leaving in 2002. In 2006, Daniel Craig was given the role of Bond for Casino Royale, which rebooted the franchise.^[113] The twenty-third Eon produced film, Skyfall, was announced in November 2011, with release scheduled for 26 October 2012.^[114] The Eon Productions series has grossed $4,910,000,000 (over $12,360,000,000 when adjusted for inflation) worldwide, making it the second highest grossing film series, behind Harry Potter.^[115]

Non-Eon films[link]

In 1967, Casino Royale was adapted into a parody Bond film starring David Niven as Sir James Bond and Ursula Andress as Vesper Lynd. David Niven had been Ian Fleming's preference for the part of James Bond.^[116] The result of a court case in the High Court in London in 1963 allowed Kevin McClory to produce a remake of Thunderball titled Never Say Never Again in 1983.^[117] The film, starring Sean Connery as Bond, was not part of the Eon series of Bond films. In 1997 the Sony Corporation acquired all or some of McClory's rights in an undisclosed deal,^[117] which were then subsequently acquired by MGM, whilst on 4 December 1997, MGM announced that the company had purchased the rights to Never Say Never Again from Schwartzman's company Taliafilm.^[118] Eon now currently (as of 2012) holds the full adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels.^[117][119]

Music[link]

The "James Bond Theme" was written by Monty Norman and was first orchestrated by the John Barry Orchestra for 1962's Dr. No, although the actual authorship of the music has been a matter of controversy for many years.^[121] In 2001, Norman won £30,000 in libel damages from the The Sunday Times newspaper, which suggested that Barry was entirely responsible for the composition.^[122] The theme, as written by Norman and arranged by Barry, was described by another Bond film composer, David Arnold, as "bebop-swing vibe coupled with that vicious, dark, distorted electric guitar, definitely an instrument of rock 'n' roll...it represented everything about the character you would want: It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. And he did it in two minutes."^[120] Barry composed the scores for eleven Bond films^[123] and had an uncredited contribution to Dr. No with his arrangement of the Bond Theme.^[120]

A Bond film staple are the theme songs heard during their title sequences sung by well-known popular singers.^[124] Several of the songs produced for the films have been nominated for Academy Awards for Original Song, including Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die",^[125] Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better"^[126] and Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only".^[127] For the non-Eon produced Casino Royale, Burt Bacharach's score included "The Look Of Love", which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song.^[128]

Video games[link]

In 1983, the first Bond video game, developed and published by Parker Brothers, was released for the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Atari 800, the Commodore 64 and the ColecoVision.^[129] Since then, there have been numerous video games either based on the films or using original storylines. In 1997, the first-person shooter video game GoldenEye 007 was developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64, based on the 1995 Pierce Brosnan film GoldenEye.^[130] The game received very positive reviews,^[131] won the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for UK Developer of the Year in 1998^[132] and generated $250 million of sales worldwide.^[133]

In 1999, Electronic Arts acquired the licence and released Tomorrow Never Dies on 16 December 1999.^[134] In October 2000, they released The World Is Not Enough^[135] for the Nintendo 64^[136] followed by007 Racing for the PlayStation on 21 November 2000.^[137] In 2003, the company released Everything or Nothing,^[138] which included the likenesses and voices of Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, Heidi Klum, Judi Dench and John Cleese, amongst others.^[139] In November 2005, Electronic Arts released a video game adaptation of From Russia with Love,^[140] which involved Sean Connery's image and voice-over for Bond.^[140]

In 2006 Electronic Arts announced a game based on then-upcoming film Casino Royale: the game was cancelled because it would not be ready by the film's release in November of that year. With MGM losing revenue from lost licensing fees, the franchise was removed from EA to Activision.^[141] Activision subsequently released the 007: Quantum of Solace game on 31 October 2008, based on the film of the same name.^[142]

Guns, vehicles and gadgets[link]

The Walther PPK is the most famous of Bond's handguns

Guns

For the first five novels, Fleming armed Bond with a Beretta 418^[143] until he received a letter from a thirty-one-year-old Bond enthusiast and gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, criticising Fleming's choice of firearm for Bond,^[144] calling it "a lady's gun – and not a very nice lady at that!"^[145] Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap his Beretta for a Walther PPK 7.65mm and this exchange of arms made it to Dr. No.^[146] Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains.^[147] In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer in his novels the name Major Boothroyd and, in Dr. No, M introduces him to Bond as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world".^[146] Bond also used a variety of rifles, including the Savage Model 99 in "For Your Eyes Only" and a Winchester .308 target rifle in "The Living Daylights".^[143] Other handguns used by Bond in the Fleming books included the Colt Detective Special and a long-barrelled Colt .45 Army Special.^[143]

The first Bond film, Dr. No, saw M ordering Bond to leave his Beretta behind and take up the Walther PPK,^[148] which the film Bond used in eighteen films.^[149] Since Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond's main weapon has been the Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol.^[149]

An Aston Martin DB5 as seen in Goldfinger.

Vehicles

In the early Bond stories Fleming gave Bond a battleship-grey Bentley 4½ Litre with an Amherst Villiers supercharger.^[150] After Bond's car was written off by Hugo Drax in Moonraker, Fleming gave Bond a Mark II Continental Bentley, which he used in the remaining books of the series.^[151] During Goldfinger, Bond was issued with an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a homing device, which he used to track Goldfinger across France. Bond returned to his Bentley for the subsequent novels.^[151]

The Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston Martin V8 Vantage^[152], during the 1980s), the V12 Vanquish^[152] and DBS^[153] during the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit;^[154] the BMW Z3,^[155] BMW 750iL^[155] and the BMW Z8.^[155] He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus, amongst others.^[156]

Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston Martin DB5, first seen in Goldfinger;^[157] it later featured in Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and Casino Royale.^[158] The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an auction in the US for $2,090,000 to an unnamed European collector.^[159]

Gadgets

The Little Nellie autogyro with its creator and pilot, Ken Wallis

Fleming's novels and early screen adaptations presented minimal equipment such as the booby-trapped attaché case in From Russia with Love, although this situation changed dramatically with the films.^[160] However, the effects of the two Eon-produced Bond films Dr. No and From Russia with Love had an effect on the novel The Man with the Golden Gun, through the increased number of devices used in Fleming's final story.^[161]

For the film adaptations of Bond, the pre-mission briefing by Q Branch became one of the motifs that ran through the series.^[162] Dr. No provided no spy-related gadgets, but a Geiger counter was used; industrial designer Andy Davey observed that the first ever onscreen spy-gadget was the attaché case shown in From Russia with Love, which he described as "a classic 007 product".^[163] The gadgets assumed a higher profile in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The film's success encouraged further espionage equipment from Q Branch to be supplied to Bond, although the increased use of technology led to an accusation that Bond was over-reliant on equipment, particularly in the later films.^[164]

Davey noted that "Bond's gizmos follow the zeitgeist more closely than any other...nuance in the films"^[163] as they moved from the potential representations of the future in the early films, through to the brand-name obsessions of the later films.^[163] It is also noticeable that, although Bond uses a number of pieces of equipment from Q Branch, including the Little Nellie autogyro,^[165] a jet pack^[166] and the exploding attaché case,^[167] the villains are also well-equipped with custom made devices,^[163] including Scaramanga's golden gun,^[168] Rosa Klebb's poison-tipped shoes,^[169] Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler hat^[170] and Blofeld's communication and bacteriological warfare agents vanity case.^[163]

Cultural impact[link]

Cinematically James Bond has been a major influence within the spy genre since the release of Dr. No in 1962.^[171] The first parody was the 1964 film Carry on Spying showing the villain Dr. Crow being overcome by agents who included James Bind (Charles Hawtry) and Daphne Honeybutt (Barbara Windsor).^[172] One of the films that reacted against the portrayal of Bond was the Harry Palmer series, whose first film, The Ipcress File was released in 1965. The eponymous hero of the series was what academic Jeremy Packer called an "anti-Bond",^[173] or what Christoph Lindner calls "the thinking man's Bond".^[174] The Palmer series were produced by Harry Saltzman, who also used key crew members from the Bond franchise, including designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John Barry.^[175] In 1966 there were twenty two secret agent films released attempting to capitalise on the popularity and success of Bond.^[176] The four "Matt Helm" films starring Dean Martin were released between 1966 and 1969,^[177] the "Flint" series starring James Coburn provided two films in 1966 and 1969,^[178] whilst The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also moved onto the cinema screen, with eight films released: all were testaments to Bond's prominence in popular culture.^[123] More recently, the Austin Powers series by writer, producer and comedian Mike Myers^[179] and other parodies such as the 2003 film Johnny English^[180] have also used elements from or parodied the Bond films.

Following the release of the film Dr. No in 1962, the quote "Bond ... James Bond", became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular culture: writers Cork and Scivally said of the introduction in Dr. No that the "signature introduction would become the most famous and loved film line ever".^[181] In 2001 it was voted as the "best-loved one-liner in cinema" by British cinema goers^[182] and in 2005, it was honoured as the 22nd greatest quotation in cinema history by the American Film Institute as part of their 100 Years Series.^[183] The 2005 American Film Institute's '100 Years' series also recognised the character of James Bond himself in the film as the third greatest film hero.^[184] He was also placed at number eleven on a similar list by Empire.^[185] Premiere also listed Bond as the fifth greatest movie character of all time.^[186]

The twenty two James Bond films produced by Eon Productions, which have grossed $4,910,000,000 in box office returns alone,^[187] have made the series one of the highest-grossing ever. It is estimated that since Dr. No, a quarter of the world's population have seen at least one Bond film.^[188] The UK Film Distributors' Association have stated that the importance of the Bond series of films to the British film industry cannot be overstated, as they "form the backbone of the industry".^[189]

Television also saw the effect of Bond films, with the NBC series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,^[190] which was described as the "first network television imitation" of Bond,^[191] largely because Fleming provided advice and ideas on the development of the series, even giving the main character the name Napoleon Solo.^[192] Other 1960s television imitations of Bond included I Spy,^[178] and Get Smart.^[193]

See also[link]

James Bond portal

• Shaken, not stirred
• Sir Fitzroy MacLean, 1st Baronet
• The Battle for Bond
• 9007 James Bond Asteroid named after the character

References[link]