USB flash drive
Memoria USB
- Date
- 1999 · confidence medium
- Place
- M-Systems, Kfar Saba, Israel
- Credited to
- Dov Moran, Amir Ban and Oron Ogdan (M-Systems, 1999 US patent); Trek Technology (Singapore) independently claimed the first design sold, the ThumbDrive
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
M-Systems' team combined a flash memory chip with a USB controller in a keychain-sized case, the DiskOnKey, to replace the floppy disk as a portable data medium. They filed the patent in 1999, and the device reached the market in 2000, almost simultaneously with Singapore-based Trek Technology's ThumbDrive.
Authorship is disputed among several companies that arrived at the same idea almost simultaneously: M-Systems (Israel) obtained the first US patent, but Trek Technology (Singapore) was first to sell commercially and won patent litigation there.
What it led to
- The practical disappearance of the floppy disk as a data medium
- A patent war between M-Systems and Trek Technology over authorship
- Cheaper portable storage thanks to Pua Khein-Seng's (Phison) single-chip design