I would have listened to you, Mike.  But then, I read a lot of science fiction, so I've always believed that what seems impossible today won't necessarily stay impossible tomorrow...

Chuck

Chuck Howell, CA
Collection Leader
Special Collections in Mass Media & Culture
Hornbake Library, U of MD
College Park, MD  20742

301-314-0401
[log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Biel [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2012 1:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] audio from pictures

From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
> For the record collector, does this preview a time when we can
> put our scratched or poorly pressed records on a scanner, grab
> an image and then use software to "play" the groove[?]

Back in 1970 when I was researching for my dissertation, to save money
on photocopying I photographed the thousands of pages of research
material I needed and processed about 25 rolls a night so I could
re-load the cartridges.  With a non-automatic Pentax SLR I was making my
own microfilm, getting my research done faster by saving hundreds of
hours of tedious note-writing by hand.  At the same time I was
re-recording ETs real-time that took many hundreds of hours.  I opined
to many people that it would be great if I could photograph the discs
and later play the films like I could later read my microfilms.

Several years later during the planing stages of the Rigler-Deutsch
Record Index, the archivists demonstrated at several ARSC conference the
idea and the progress made in designing a special camera to photograph
the labels and then the entire record and use these microfilms for the
computer data entry.  The camera took several years to design.  I
IMPLORED them to use ring lighting around the lens to light the disc
evenly in case technology would be developed to get the sound out of
these fine-grain photos.

They wouldn't consider it and didn't do it, and so the photographs of
700,000 pre-microgroove discs have light-wedges on all of them.

DAMN.

I could say it is another case of a team of professional trained
archivists not listening to a more experienced amateur, but I won't.

Mike Biel  [log in to unmask]