Re: [ARSCLIST] Format conundrum

[Ron Fial <ron@xxxxxxxx>]

Did some quick calculations, and you need about 30 reels of 2400-foot 8-track punched paper tape to store the digital data (audio) form one CD (about 650 Megabytes).   The storage volume works out to about 200 times larger.

If you convert 30,000 78s, you would need to store about 100 tons of paper reels.

I would choose chad punching (no hanging-chad here) so I could burn the chad for heat.  A good 78 collection digitized and transfered to paper tape, and you would have enough chad to heat your house for the rest of your life.

  Ron Fial

At 04:50 PM 1/11/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>steven austin wrote:
>> Just a thought:
>>
>> Does anyone make digital audio copies from their archival sound sources,
>> then store the data as code printouts? Cards, paper, whatever?
>>
>> I would think with digital information technology, we don't really need
>> to rely on tape or laser-encoded discs for archival storage when it
>> would be so much more efficient to store the information as digital
>> code, ready at any time to be translated through software into audio
>> sound. A hard copy of the code would avoid the degradation that all
>> storage media suffer and always offer a first-generation master of the
>> original source recovery, where a CD-R or a tape would be subject to the
>> condition of the transport media.
>>
>> Know what I mean?
>>
>> Steven Austin
>>
>
>I've played around with a sci-fi story about this kind of thing.  I
>imagine a future where there are no more computers, but reams and reams
>of printed code spat out in the last days before the machines stopped.
>In the far-flung days long after the cataclysm, a special group of
>scholars, the digital-crypto-paleographers, have been trained using the
>Rosetta stone of the period (a stack of accidentally preserved "For
>Dummies" books) to draw meaning from these lines and lines of digits.
>
>In his monk-like cell, our scholar-hero, 47B-Ylba-C, pours over pages
>and pages of code by the light of a glowing fungus.  After a lifetime of
>combing over a document determined to be from a single cohesive unit of
>knowledge, 47B-Ylba-C has his eureka moment: "Aha!" he says, "The
>ancients were wise to cleverly convolute their secrets!" He breathes
>deeply and cries out through the open doorway, "Brothers!  Sisters! I
>have broken the code, that terrible, difficult, once-thought
>impenetrable code that we have determined protects that most valuable
>and secret of ancient knowledge!"  He pauses before the gathered throng
>to flex his outstretched fingers in the ritual motions of the ancient
>Code Generators.  His fellow scholars flex in return.  "I have
>vindicated the memory of the great scholar 7-Tubar-X founder of our
>sect!" A gasp erupts from the collected throng who begin to madly flex
>their outstretched fingers in excitement.   "I have penetrated that most
>puzzling of the ancient cryptograms!" He pauses for emphasis.  "Yes my
>brethren, I have unlocked the secret to ATRAC!" Astonished gasps and
>cries of joy fill the chamber.  He glances about the room with his eyes
>afire.  "Behold! No more shall the most occult secrets of the greatest
>of the ancient wise-priestess seers be kept from us!  No more will we be
>locked out of the wisdom of Brittney Spears!"
>
>
>--
>*********************************
>Andy Kolovos
>Archivist/Folklorist
>Vermont Folklife Center
>P.O. Box 442
>Middlebury, VT 05753
>(802) 388-4964
>akolovos @ vermontfolklifecenter.org
>http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org