All I can say is, the large floppy’s preceded the 3.5” hard disks on the computers we had at work, and the computers that were available from retail sources where I lived.
The PDP11S was from the 60s. The Intel 4004 was in 1974. The IBM PC XT with the 8088 processor and large 5-1/4” floppies was from the late ‘70s. The 3.5” hard cased floppies came after that.