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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.
If the film will last 500 years, then don't get rid of it. But if the reader takes several people to move then it seems suitable for an upgrade. A transport mechanism for the film along with a camera to display the film on a computer or monitor would seem to be the way to go. It also wouldn't seem to to be too hard to have the reader be able to count frames, making quick access to go forward or back semi-automated.
Around 1980 I got a job as a COM Camera Operator.
This was a job mounting tapes on cameras, loading the job and film canister, and pulling the tape and film canister. The tapes held the data transported from a data center. The camera displayed and 'shot' the data onto 105mm film that became the master to produce microfiche from.
We were a Service Bureau so we got tapes in from companies all over the region. Many companies had their permanent financial records shot to microfiche.
Some jobs came in daily, weekly, or quarterly. The film masters produced on silver halide film, were then duplicated on diazo film (ammonia process, the same chemical process as used for blueprints) to produce the 'use' copies of microfiche.
The 'dupers' were a lower tier in the labor at the COM shop.
Some of the cameras were proprietary, but the other group of cameras (called the Betas for some reason) incorporated a PDP-8 minicomputer as their controller. The data tapes were either 800, 1600, or the new high density 6250 bpi tapes.
The reason people don't want those ungainly machines is because they don't need them. You can get all the durability of microfilm storage without the bulk or complexity of the old-style camera or reader by using digital microfilm recorders and digital microfilm readers. A digital microfilm reader is about the size of a cigar box and hooks up via USB to your PC.
If you're preparing for a post-apocalyptic world, you can still always read those films with a simple handheld microscope.
Around 1980, I got a job as an LPT Camera Operator!
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Back in the late â90s I had to present to a group of academics at a univerisy conference. I was the only non-academic presenting, and at the time I worked as an IT consultant for a major software company that everyone likes to dislike. (Clue: starts with an O.) Wanting to ensure that my presentation was hassle free I asked for an overhead projector having previously printed out some transparencies at the office. All the other presenters were keen to show off their technical skills by presenting from their laptops using what was at the time relatively new technology: digital projectors. Back then they still required a certain degree of fiddling to get to work as this was still the era of Windows 95/98. And a lot of fiddling and delays ensued that afternoon. I didnâ(TM)t want any of that so opted for a good old fashioned overhead projector which worked flawlessly. Fast forward 20 years and it has become a much more reliable technology so wouldnâ(TM)t do the same today, but one shouldnâ(TM)t be ashamed of old-school technology if it gets the job done.
It is all very romantic until you have to actually use one because some âoebureaucratâ refuses to get his collection digitized and a task that would take twenty minutes on a computer takes up the whole afternoonâ"if you are lucky enough to work with well-organized data, that is.
That's what I'm thinking, if I had an actual microfilm it'd go through the scanner once, be stored as PDF on a HDD and go back into the vault permanently or at least until you lost your last "normal" backup. How many microfilms can you store on a 10TB HDD?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Much as I like The Atlantic, I will not click on this obvious clickbait bullshit slashvertisement.
TFA had exactly 1 paragraph out of 17 related to its own title:
Their longevity was another matter. As early as May 17, 1964, as reported in The New York Times, microfilm appeared to degrade, with “microfilm rashes” consisting of “small spots tinged with red, orange or yellow” appearing on the surface. An anonymous executive in the microfilm market was quoted as saying they had “found no trace of measles in our film but saw it in the film of others and they reported the same thing about us.” The acetate in the film stock was decaying after decades of use and improper storage, and the decay also created a vinegar smell—librarians and researchers sometimes joked about salad being made in the periodical rooms. The problem was solved by the early 1990s, when Kodak introduced polyester-based microfilm, which promised to resist decay for at least 500 years.
The original linked article from the New York Times in 1964 is actually far more interesting.
It is all very romantic until you have to actually use one because some “bureaucrat” refuses to get his collection digitized and a task that would take twenty minutes on a computer takes up the whole afternoon—if you are lucky enough to work with well-organized data, that is.
It takes time and money to digitize a large collection of analogue data.
They can budget to digitized and index / OCR everything at a certain rate ("x" rolls per week), but they may not get to the part of the collection that you're interested in right away. However, once you request particular roll(s), then they can perhaps push that up to the top of a stack on an ad hoc basis for future researchers. They can put the original analogue stuff back into storage.
I'm reminded of the Digital Doomsday Book in the UK that could not be read after 15 years, but the original from 1086 still accessible:
As a result, no one can access the reams of project information - equivalent to several sets of encyclopaedias - that were assembled about the state of the nation in 1986. By contrast, the original Domesday Book--an inventory of eleventh-century England compiled in 1086 by Norman monks--is in fine condition in the Public Record Office, Kew, and can be accessed by anyone who can read and has the right credentials.
* https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project
How much stuff was / is out there in Flash video format? How many DDS-1 tape readers are there, with an interface (IDE? SCSI-2?) that can connect to modern computers?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Magnetic_tape_data_formats