I think I say “huh?” or “huh” too much. Its normally when I come across something interesting or curious. The following (which you may already have come across) fits the bill for both. Its a “huh?” for “wait a minute, I thought we should be going digital to preserve this” and its a “huh…” for … well, you be the judge.
A company called MicroArchive Systems has a technology that uses high-resolution color microfilm to create archival analog records of digital images. This special microfilm is extremely fine-grained and has an ASA of 0.1. The laser used to expose the film can resolve to 3 microns per pixel providing the ability to render a full resolution 1 GB tiff file onto a small 105mm piece of film. The dye and support stability of this microfilm is rated at 500 years by RIT. The advantages to this method is that it results in a durable object that is not dependant on back-up, or subject to media and/or format obsolescence.
In the words of the Guinness advert: “Brilliant!” … I think.
Anyway, their website is www.microarchive.com
Additional reporting by Stanley Smith
November 16th, 2006 07:15
I was pretty excited by this myself. Pity it’s so expensive!!!