I didn't realize it took so long for microfilm to catch on in the US. I knew about Watson Davis was a big US proponent of microfilm in the 1930s: > "[Microfil

I didn't realize it took so long for microfilm to catch on in the US. I knew about Watson Davis was a big US proponent of microfilm in the 1930s: > "[Microfilm] will supplement other forms of publication and make accessible material of all sorts that can not now be printed because of economic factors. It will make available out-of-print and rare books. It is adapted to the publication of photographs and other illustrations.... In this way the document is perpetually 'in print' but no extensive, space-consuming stocks need be stored, only the document itself and the microfilm negative from which positives are made for distribution." But that was over a decade after Otlet and Goldschmidt's demonstration. In the US, I've seen price lists from the mid-1900s. It was cheaper by a factor of two to get a copy from microfilm than from paper. There was also a question of it printing only on microfilm was a "publication", for purposes of scientific priority and patent priority.