Came across these beauties while at work today

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Healthy_Article_2237@reddit

During my last year of college (22 years ago) I had a job making copies of microfiche using one of these then taking the data and typing it in. It was columns of numbers. Later OCR got good enough to use that. I always wanted a USB microfiche reader that had integrated ocr but I’m sure that’s a small market who would want that. Later the state agency that had it scanned it all and another company sells the text data at $100 per document which honestly is a good price considering it use to take hours for me to type in by hand.

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sputwiler@reddit

I always wanted a USB microfiche reader that had integrated ocr but I’m sure that’s a small market who would want that.

I'm pretty sure when my library got rid of the analogue copier microfiche viewers they were replaced with USB microfiche readers connected to a typical windows PC and a printer.

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Healthy_Article_2237@reddit

That makes sense that they would use a modern machine to view them but I think a lot of agencies have just already scanned them to pdf or even better editable text.

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sputwiler@reddit

Perhaps for new archives, but the library already has reels of decades of newspapers archived, and scanning that would be a huge undertaking. It's likely the provider would charge more money than it's worth for access to digital versions, so in a way it makes sense to keep using the physical copies, just with a USB viewer.

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Practical-Hand203@reddit

Very cool machine! Looks like it's nearly impossible to find any information on it on the web and the manual hasn't been archived, but from the absence of ports on the pictures I've seen, I'm dubious whether there's anything digital or related to computing going on here.

Seems to me like it's "just" an analog photocopier (i.e. a xerograph, the kind that has to scan over the original for every copy it makes) tacked to a microfiche viewer. Still a very cool concept, though and undoubtedly a godsend for people doing library and archive research when everything was still on microfiche.

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sputwiler@reddit

My town library used to have (a rather different looking) version of this. I think the printer was mounted vertically under the desk, and yeah, there was just some optics/mirrors connecting the two so you could print out a copy of whatever microfiche you were viewing.

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gcc-O2@reddit

Also, Canon used PC for Personal Copier, so the name "PC Printer" is a bit misleading obviously. It could be worse, PC LOAD LETTER

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Academic_Deal7872@reddit

Load GIF from Office Space

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schakalsynthetc@reddit

undoubtedly a godsend for people doing library and archive research when everything was still on microfiche

Can confirm.. My university library had several of them.

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Independent_Shoe3523@reddit

Microfiche, baby!

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PickledPeoples@reddit

Ide love to find one of those just for the fun of it and nostalgia.

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TheWookieStoned@reddit

Duuuuuuude

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af_cheddarhead@reddit

We had one in our Air Force Fire Department dispatch center, we used to get hazardous material info on microfiche, updated quarterly.

We would print out the information for the nastier chemicals we knew were kept on the base. The printouts were kept in the dispatch center and on the Assistant Fire Chief's vehicle.

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