There were more variations of them than you realized. But now - 53 years after the IBM 23FD was first introduced, 41 years after Sony started selling a 3.5" version through HP and - after some corporate subterfuge that involved a Sony engineer hiding from Steve Jobs in a broom closet - Apple, 26 years after the first iMac shipped without one, 14 years after they were last manufactured and after two years of difficult legislative and technical upgrades, Japan has declared victory over the floppy disk.