Microfiche scanning

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "John" == John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> writes:

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

I assume the tapes were never thought of as archival storage -- merely
temporary containers to hold the bits as they were carried from the
producer to the fiche printer.  So there was no more reason to
preserve those tapes than there is to back up /tmp.

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

Sure.  Some fiche is computer output, straight tape to fiche; others
is photography of paper originals.  An obvious benefit is that you
could carry tens of thousands of pages in a field service toolbox.
That was important back in the days when field service actually
repaired things in the field (as opposed to just module swap).

	 paul