I always thought that "flash" memory was named for EEPROM's erase speed compared to EPROM erase speed (less than a second versus 20+ minutes). EPROM has erase

I always thought that "flash" memory was named for EEPROM's erase speed compared to EPROM erase speed (less than a second versus 20+ minutes). EPROM has erase as the first word in the acronym, so everyone just said "erasing" the PROM when they put the chip in the UV eraser. Wikipedia lists finer differentiation between flash memory and EEPROMs. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEPROM#Related_types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEPROM#Related_types