I went to a lunch-time talk at WWDC'09 on this stuff (I forget the name of the guy presenting unfortunately, but I presume he was mentioned in those articles).

I went to a lunch-time talk at WWDC'09 on this stuff (I forget the name of the guy presenting unfortunately, but I presume he was mentioned in those articles). Absolutely mind-blowing. Two things I recall, apart from the stunning images: * This was all done in analogue of course; the camera of the lunar orbiter had a 24" aperture from memory, and essentially a mechanical film processing lab onboard (then stitched back on earth by manual layout and re-photographing). "They knew how to build stuff back then!" * As you said, he was emphasising that while data formats are important, the hardware is even more crucial. For the tapes they were recovering, there were only 4 machines left in the world that could read them... and only one human who knew how they worked and could repair them! I went and started reading up on the long-now project after that. * Bonus recollection: the reason the tapes hadn't degraded and lost their magnetic material, like many others their age, was because the binding agent used was... whale oil. Actually, I've found the slides: http://www.slideshare.net/kcowing/presentation-by-dennis-wingo-on-the-lunar-orbiter-image-recovery-project-at-the-2009-apple-wwdc http://www.slideshare.net/kcowing/presentation-by-dennis-win... Thanks so much for the reminder.