By the 20th century, the c-spelling was more popular in British English, while the k-spelling was preferred in American English. In the 1950s, when the American company IBM pioneered the first hard disk drive storage devices, the k-spelling was used. Consequently, in computer jargon today it is common for the k-spelling 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).
Some latter-day storage device manufacturers prefer the c-spelling. In 1979 the Dutch company Philips, along with Sony, developed the compact disc medium; here, the c-spelling was chosen. The c-spelling is now used consistently for optical media such as the compact disc and similar technologies.[3]