They don’t only still exist, but until recently controlled U.S. nuclear arsenal and more.

If you were born before the noughtys there’s a slight chance you’ve seen or even used them. Depending on the task you required a total of either one or one thousand floppy disks to run a specific program or software.

This half-century-old technology, which I would never recommend to anyone has been utilized by the U.S. military until very recently, but not just for any old, forgotten branch of the military. This past summer, military authorities eliminated the use of eight-inch floppy disks that were roughly 50 years old, for controlling the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Unbelievably, other “developed” nations were still using floppy disks for things like health care systems. Norway’s nationalized health plan, used to distribute thousands of 3.5-inch disks to physicians every month. That highly reliable practice was finally stopped only a few years ago.

The floppy disk evolved from IBM in 1971. Its name was derived from a magnetic disc enclosed in a flexible plastic envelope. Early versions could hold about 175 kilobytes of data (an average smartphone’s memory today is at least 45,000 times better). The disks shrank over time — from eight inches to 5.25 inches to 3.5 inches — then abruptly fell out of popularity, most notably when the first iMac was introduced without a disk drive in 1998.

The disks haven’t been made for years but are still available from specific retailers. For some, they endure as an icon in modern software. So, next time you see an antiquated piece of technology you may want to check if lives depend on it.