Microfiche scanning

[John Foust]

At 11:41 PM 4/21/2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
>Besides, I doubt there's many pages on fiche that don't already
>exist on paper. A series of afternoon perusals of the sheet titles
>will probably reveal that. Not everything need exist inside a computer.

Ah, Grasshopper, you answer your own questions.  "Afternoon search"
does not equal "fgrep", does it?  Each has its own benefits.  Both are good.

It's a shame that many of the fiche-only docs once existed in magtape form
and are now lost.  It would've been easier and less error-prone to 
emulate a viewer for old page layout RUNOFF-style markup.  Has there
ever been an anecdote found about why all that data was tossed?

Fiche dominated because it was cheaper to reproduce and easier to view 
than electronic documents.  It could handle hand drawings as well as COM.

- John