Microfilm to Microfiche? IBM 3890 / IBM 3894
Posted by bigbookofrandom@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 12 comments
I use microfilm and microfilm on a regular basis so I’m clearly a huge nerd. But I just learned about that IBM made a series of document processors that printed documents onto microfilm. Then at some point down the line the microfilm was converted to microfiche. I cannot fathom why anyone would convert from one micro format to another.
Has anyone hear worked on an IBM 3890 or IBM 3894 with the add one microfilm module? Or any other tech that converts microfilm to microfiche. If so, I would love to pick your brain.
SirTwitchALot@reddit
The library in my town growing up had microfiche readers but not microfilm. I would imagine they would have been interested in buying sheets converted from microfilm
bigbookofrandom@reddit (OP)
That’s really interesting. Every Library I’ve been to has both. Maybe there was more demand for conversation than I realize.
EcceFelix@reddit
I think a lot depends on the documents and users- if training is needed. Most public libraries would use 35mm for newspapers, requiring little technology.
EcceFelix@reddit
You would basically need to splice hundreds of rows of film to get fiche. No go. Fiche is produced either as 105 microfilm, or 16mm cut up in pieces and inserted in jackets. Yuck. You don't go backwards from fiche to roll film.
help_send_chocolate@reddit
I've used film but not fiche.
Retrieving documents from film (which I did as a temp job once) seems very inefficient to me. Where I worked at least, documents were approximately ordered by date and there was no index.
But it's simple to index microfiche.
bigbookofrandom@reddit (OP)
The sorting aspect definitely makes sense.
EcceFelix@reddit
There are systems to do that. Three level blips on the edge of the film enable indexing to book, chapter, and page (or a similar hierarchy). Intelligent reader printers are then able to fast forward to a specific page within seconds.
EcceFelix@reddit
IBM 3890s were used by banks to read, number, film and sort checks. The images were at 50x with front and back of the check spanning the 16mm. The film was 2,000 feet long and no flanges. Lots of fun in the darkroom winding onto a reel for processing! One wrong move and it would explode. Memories.
bigbookofrandom@reddit (OP)
Woah, that sounds really wild. Would you keep them as microfilm or print onto microfiche?
EcceFelix@reddit
We would break it down into 215 foot reels of 16mm film. Film came in at 7:00 - about 10,000 feet or more. We had until 10:30 to load, process, inspect, break into reels, type labels, and deliver by 10:30. No room for error. Once the bank sorted the checks, they were sent to the different federal reserve banks, so the film is all they had for documentation. I did not enjoy making the phone calls saying we wrecked some film - either due to human or mechanical error. To this day I still have microfilm nightmares, and its been years since I did that.
cobra7@reddit
Back in the mid 1980’s I was a project manager leading a software team that upgraded the Navy’s personnel system at the Pentagon Navy Annex. This system kept all personnel records on what is called “strip-up microfiche”. The way it worked was paper documents were photographed onto 16mm microfilm which was then developed and sent to the mounting department. Computer records (the system was on dual MV8000 Data General Eclipse computers that were a part of what we were doing) kept track of the next available microfiche slot depending on the type of record being archived. The microfilm was mounted on a mounting machine and the person’s microfiche jacket was retrieved from one of three massive robotic “Fichtrieve” units. The mounter cut the film, applied some adhesive, and a bit of heat and placed the image in its proper place on the fiche. The computer records for that person was updated, and the fiche went back into the monster file. During promotion reviews, copies of were made using Diazo duplicators which were provided to the review board. The originals never left the records wing.
Also did a system for a Denver company that specialized in providing custom microfiche containing oil well drilling logs. The logs were imaged and placed onto microfilm and then into Regan microfilm storage units. We built custom scanning hardware that went on each Regan unit. Customers could order fiche for a specific area and the images were retrieved and sent to a fiche printer that we built - it had a very high resolution screen which displayed the image, a special camera took a picture of the screen onto a specific frame of the microfiche. When all slots were filled on a fiche or the last image printed, the fiche was cut from the film roll, developed, dried, and placed in the output hopper for packaging and shipment to the client.
These projects were done before mass document scanning and archiving were popular. At that time, it was cheaper to image onto film than it was to digitize and store the millions of images on very expensive hard drives. Once optical disk jukeboxes became a thing, microfilm began to decline. And once hard drives increased to GB and TB sizes, the jukebox was doomed.
bigbookofrandom@reddit (OP)
Thank you so much! This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. That process flow also makes sense for the use case I was told about.