[chungy]

Just a little nitpicking note: the spelling of disc versus disk. Per dictionary definition, it's two spellings of the same word. Per convention, "disk" is usually used with magnetic media (like floppies) while "disc" is usually used with optical media (CDs/DVDs/Blu-ray).

It took me as just a little odd to see "floppy disc" even if it's technically correct.

[scarybeast]

The blog post uses conventions associated with the machine in question, the BBC Micro, which is an iconic 1980s UK machine. It was pretty much "Disc" back then, e.g. the dreaded "Disc error 0E" from the OS, or the spelling written on the discs themselves, e.g. this Watford Electronics Diagnostics disc:

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/21293/Diagnostics-Dis...

Not sure if it's a UK thing or a 1980s thing.

[robin_reala]

It’s a en-GB vs en-US thing, that warrants its own Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_disc

[OJFord]

> Early BBC technicians differentiated between disks (in-house transcription records) and discs (the colloquial term for commercial gramophone records, or what the BBC dubbed CGRs).

I love that.

In my own usage I've always made the magnetic distinction without really knowing why. At least now I can identify the boundary as 'magnetism'..!

[pbhjpbhj]

>UK thing or a 1980s thing //

I think it's both, in the UK at least.

The Beeb in school in the 80s had a 5¼-inch floppy disc drive. The BBC Domesday project, 84-86, was on Lazer Disc. But as Compact Discs took flight in the domestic market we'd moved to 3½-inch floppy disks; which by the 90s were labelled "diskette" IIRC and so were called disks. Then hard drives were called hard disk drives I think because they came from the global/USA market, so the only "discs" that remained in common use were optical discs, and the split - for me at least - was kinda-retconned in that optical discs were always 'discs' and magnetic were always 'disks'.

The early UK made hard disk drives were [sometimes?] called "disc drives", http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/22567/%20Acorn%20BBC%...; this one from Cumana, Guildford, UK, http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36026/Cumana%205.25-i... says "disk drive" though, and I'm shocked ;o) ...

[egypturnash]

Fading memories of playing c64 games from both sides of the pond suggest that "disk" was the US spelling and "disc" was the UK.

[thaumasiotes]

I (American) agree with chungy; there is a strong convention that specifies floppy disks and compact discs. We could say that "disk" is the American spelling of "floppy disk", but not that it is the American spelling of disc.

I suspect that "disk" is used because it is shortened from "diskette", which wouldn't work at all if spelled "discette".

[egypturnash]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_disc:

By the 20th century, the "k" spelling was more popular in the United States, while the "c" variant was preferred in the UK. Consequently, in computer terminology today it is common for the "k" word to refer mainly to magnetic storage devices (particularly in British English, where the term disk is sometimes regarded as a contraction of diskette, a much later word and actually a diminutive of disk).

So in the mid eighties there was a distinct color/colour kind of split between disk/disc in the US/UK. And someone immersed in the world of restoring data from magnetic storage for a distinctly UK computer of the eighties? Eminently sensible for them to use the UK term, when everything on the computer is going to be saying "INSERT DISC 2".

----

There are also some notes in that page on how Phillips/Sony's choice of "disc" for the CD has ended up with that being the common choice for optical media vs magnetic; back in the eighties this convention was not yet established. And then there are also sections for disc/disk in medical literature, and in disc-throwing games. English spelling is weird.

[mnw21cam]

And talking of interesting spelling, it's "Philips", not "Phillips".

[egypturnash]

that's my own special typo :)

[colanderman]

I had to Wikipedia what term is used for magneto-optical media. As much as I'd love it to be "disck", alas "disc" (as in "MiniDisc") seems correct in that case.

[thaumasiotes]

> As much as I'd love it to be "disck"

You reminded me of the https://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Boock_of_darc... :D

[LeoPanthera]

Disk is (or can be) short for diskette - which means a disc in a protective sheath.

Meanwhile a "disc" is any flat circular object.

So floppy disk, hard disk, but compact disc, is correct.

The only medium I know of that doesn't obey this rule is the Sony MiniDisc. MDs are definitely diskettes, and so should in theory be spelled MiniDisk. But presumably that's for trademark reasons.

[ChrisArchitect]

yeah geez, immediate reaction. Well established just search around that 'disk' became standard. It's weird when someone writes a modern piece like this and like, the whole time they never noticed it's spelt disk everywhere??! It's another one of those things where you ask yourself "what internet do these ppl surf?!"