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Microfilm Lasts Half a Millennium (theatlantic.com)
Millions of publications -- not to mention spy documents -- can be read on microfilm machines. But people still see these devices as outmoded and unappealing. From a report: I recently acquired a decommissioned microfilm reader. My university bought the reader for $16,000 in 1998, but its value has depreciated to $0 in their official bookkeeping records. Machines like it played a central role in both research and secret-agent tasks of the last century. But this one had become an embarrassment. The bureaucrats wouldn't let me store the reader in a laboratory that also houses a multimillion-dollar information-display system. They made me promise to "make sure no VIPs ever see it there." After lots of paperwork and negotiation, I finally had to transport the machine myself. Unlike a computer -- even an old one -- it was heavy and ungainly. It would not fit into a car, and it could not be carried by two people for more than a few feet. Even moving the thing was an embarrassment. No one wanted it, but no one wanted me to have it around either.
And yet the microfilm machine is still widely used. It has centuries of lasting power ahead of it, and new models are still being manufactured. It's a shame that no intrigue will greet their arrival, because these machines continue to prove essential for preserving and accessing archival materials. [...] Microfilm's decline intensified with the development of optical-character-recognition (OCR) technology. Initially used to search microfilm in the 1930s, Emanuel Goldberg designed a system that could read characters on film and translate them into telegraph code. Further reading: 'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter.
And yet the microfilm machine is still widely used. It has centuries of lasting power ahead of it, and new models are still being manufactured. It's a shame that no intrigue will greet their arrival, because these machines continue to prove essential for preserving and accessing archival materials. [...] Microfilm's decline intensified with the development of optical-character-recognition (OCR) technology. Initially used to search microfilm in the 1930s, Emanuel Goldberg designed a system that could read characters on film and translate them into telegraph code. Further reading: 'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter.
Around 1980, I got a job as an LPT Camera Operator!
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I used a microfilm reader Saturday at my State Library. The Fast Forward scrolled 10 pages/second and the forward took 10 seconds to scroll one page. the speed control dial didn't work.
It was fun and nostalgic and cool to show my teenage daughter 20th C tech but I would have preferred a PDF of the 500 pages on that reel. The documents were scribbled in 1836 and I will take months to transcribe them. I want to print them out on paper and transcribe when time comes.
Some of the pages are very faint because whoever filmed them got some light settings wrong. Today we could rescan in full color and read them better.