Das (Microfilm

by Alex Brunner - President, Blue Water Systems

The cu rren t explosion of docum ent im aging applications is clearly the resu lt of a com bination of a num ber of new technologies w hich seem to have m iraculously m at- u red a t the sam e tim e. Fax, copier,optical tapes,optical disks an d com pact disks (CD’s), high perform ance personal com puters,new telephone technologies w ith cellular, wireless and fibre optic netw orks an d new printing technologies in black an d white an d colour are now the backbone of imaging technology.

Realising th a t th e above technologies had to all come together in order for im aging to “take off’ in the m arket place, one m ight ask which technologies have previously been u sed to achieve efficiencies in dealing with billions of docum ents created in governm ent and in d u stry ? The answ er to th is question quickly leads u s to microfilm.

Microfilm is relatively “old” technology in m ostly governm ental applications. Microfilm gained a m ajor boost during World W ar II w hen all mail for the US Forces w as microfilmed, se n t to the final destination in firm copy form, w ith su b seq u en t lcoal p aper p rint copy production for d istribution to the soldiers in the field. Of course spies used microfilm then, as now, extensively, w hich gave microfilm som e of its m ysterious appeal.

From these first large successful applications of microfilm, th e in d u stry grew to becom e a billion dol

MICROFILM ENGINEERING

The way to achieve

ARCHIVAL QUALITY MICROFILM

1 Be certain you have correctly processed film by Methylene Blue testing.

2 Silverlock the image to ensure the archival quality remains for at least 100 years in general use.

3 Ring Don Abbott on 021-643-4748

Dass (Microfilm) Limited P.O. Box 852 Birmingham B5 4DU

lar industry by the mid 1970's Strong growth continued with the introduction of COM an d the u se of com puters to keep indexing inform ation linked to microfilm im ages or CAR. Today m illions of m icrofilm readers an d h u n d red s of th o u sa n d s of reader printers are installed worldwide. Even though m any end u sers chose to replace their coated (dry silver) paper or w et process (electrostatic)m achines in the late 80’s an d early 90’s w ith plain p aper printers, the relative high cost of the new m icrographics equipm ent, k ept m any u se rs still w ith older prin ter tech nology. This is especially tru e in the case of 16mm autom ated roll film retrieval system s w hich ru n betw een $10,000 an d $20,000 each.

M icrographics h as obvious, excellent benefits over paper, su ch as space savings, cost, speed of retrieval, security b u t certain draw backs if com pared w ith electronic im aging system s. Even m ajor “norm al” draw backs of microfilm are being resolved w ith new im aging technology on th e o u tp u t side. For example, m any m icrographics system s deliver poor consistent image and copy quality due to th e com plex microfilm production cycle. These su b sta n d a rd im ages are then printed on (maybe substandard) printers, w hich lack the technology now available to enh an ce im ages electronically.

New techniques have been developed to prolong the life of the m icrographics in d u stry an d to integrate m icrographics im ages w ith new electronic image technology. M icrographics vendors have now developed film scan n ers w hich produce digitized im ages from microfilm. The m icrographics in d u stry w as quick to recognise the high profit potential of these new rath e r expensive “digital w orkstations”. Not only do digital w orkstations com m and higher prices, b u t they lead their vendors to significant “ad d -on sales” in optical disk imaging software, hardw are sales and conversion services. These “digital w orkstations” are actually new model re a d e r/p rin te rs w hich allow electronic annotation of microfilm laser p rin ts w ith electronic c u t & p aste features, an d in m any cases elimin ate the need for paper p rin ts altogether because of direct electronic image tran sm issio n capability.

Recognising the su b stan tial investm ent in m icrofilm equipm ent by end u sers over the years, the thought of having to replace all microfilm reader an d reader p rinters w ith expensive new digital w ork s ta tions is not very attractive to end u sers. W ith heavy investm ent in microfilm technology, w h at is the m icrographics user, who owns microfilm archives w ith millions of microfilm im ages, to do? Convert them all to digital m edia? Hardly ! The conversion an d ongoing ditital storage costs are too prohibitive for m ost applications to be justifiable.

The answ er lies in the easy retrofit conversion of m icrographics readers an d reader p rin ters to digital imaging system s (film scanning) capability. All microfilm readers have one thing in comm on: a viewing screen ! If one could sim ply replace th is screen with a “scanning screen” the life of existing micro