3 ms·
One big advantage of film (especially transparencies rather than negatives) though is that it can trivially be read, regardless of technology or hardware. I ca
by toomanybeersies 8y ago
One big advantage of film (especially transparencies rather than negatives) though is that it can trivially be read, regardless of technology or hardware.
I can view on a light table or project a photographic slide from 1935 just as easily as I can view a slide developed yesterday. On the other hand, it's not a trivial task to read a magnetic tape from the 70's. These days it's not even trivial for me to read a CD, I don't own a CD reader, and if I'm away from my desk I can't even read a USB flash drive on my Macbook Pro.
- xamuel 8y agoThat's important for casual readers, but less important for historical reconstruction purpose. Consider that reseachers used a micro-CT scan followed by volume cartography analysis to locate the ink within the thoroughly burnt-to-a-crisp En-Gedi scroll [1]. Compared to that, a CD is nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En-Gedi_Scroll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En-Gedi_Scroll
- adrianN 8y agoIf you don't know the encoding the CD uses, getting the bits out is the easy part.