A few years after 1980, especially after 1985, the computers with coprocessors like Intel 8087 or Motorola 68881 became the most numerous computers with floating-point hardware, and for them the default FP size was 80-bit.

So the 1990s were long after the time when 32-bit FP numbers were normal. FP32 was revived only by GPUs, for graphic applications where precision matters much less.

Already after 1974, the C programming language made double-precision the default FP size, not the 32-bit single-precision size, for the same reason why Intel 8087 introduced extended precision. Single-precision computations for traditional applications are suitable only for experts, not for ordinary computer users.

While before C the programming languages used single-precision 32-bit numbers as the default size, the recommendations were already to use only double-precision wherever complicated expressions were computed.

I have started using computers by punching cards for a mainframe, but that was already at a time when 32-bit FP numbers were not normally used, but only 64-bit FP numbers.

The best chances of seeing 32-bit single-precision numbers in use was in the decade from 1965 to 1975, at the users of cheap mainframes or of minicomputers without hardware floating-point units, where floating-point emulation was done in software and emulating double-precision was significantly slower.

Before the mid sixties, there were more chances to see 36-bit floating-point numbers as the smallest FP size.

Yeah. I know. I'm not disagreeing with your diagnosis, I'm just trying to gently rib you that your correction is misaimed. It's a joke, ya know?

>Single-precision computations for traditional applications are suitable only for experts, not for ordinary computer users.

Lots of ordinary computer users did compute in single precision! The reason I picked the 1990s as 'ancient' and not 1980 (when the 8087 was taped out) or 1985 (when IEEE754 was finally approved) was because those microprocessors were now in the hands of users who weren't under the supervision of 'experts'. That, along with the lack of fast 64 bit registers + the desire for high throughput at low fidelity led to a lot of 32 bit code!

And, frankly, if you want to get real technical, the ability of non-experts to program in FP in 64 bit is enforced NOT ONLY by the doubled bits but by the implicit ability (absent now in many implementations) to use the 80 bit extended precision format for intermediate calcs. It's the added bits in that format for scratch that let lots of 64 bit programs just work.