I am a Ford Parts Man and when I first started in the business, paper catalogs were still being used. The Microfiche was just making its debut. This was in 1984. We stopped using the Microfiche sometime around the early 1990's. We still have hundreds of cards and one functional viewer. I tell you, when I put a card in that viewer now I am instantly transported back to a simpler time. What great memories of my early career. Thank you History Guy.
I remember as a kid going to my dad’s “office” -he was an aircraft mechanic for a major airline that is now history that deserves to be remembered… He had shelves of cartridges, organized by aircraft type, of microfilm for all the maintenance manuals. He showed me how he would refer to an index to guide him to the right cartridge, loaded it into his viewer, scroll to the right portion of the manual, and “print” on thermal paper the steps or diagram he needed! Amazing to think that the phone I am holding and watched this video on…could easily hold all of those cartridges! (And could probably be searched in a fraction of the time!)
Parts and Service Departments at automobile dealerships in the United States used microfiche for the very same purpose well into the late 1970s and possibly beyond. It was actually quite quick and simple to operate once you got the hang of it. Thanks for triggering that memory. Carry on.
From the early 70’s, I still have some microfiches of scientific papers & even a journal that I elected to receive by mail as microfiche, rather than the traditional paper subscription of that journal. I think one reason I still have them is their easy of storage & transport as I’ve moved widely. I had the ‘viewer’ as well then, which has long since gone missing.
I'm an architect and worked with renovating a restaurant last year. The village happened to have microfiche sheets of the 1976 building drawings which were very useful. I had to fill out an FOIA form to first review them.
I was a Microforms Librarian for 23 years. The collection was huge with millions of titles in fiche, film and microcards formats. Despite digitalization it's still going well.love the stuff
I have been a local history librarian for well over twenty years. Thank you for taking the time to talk of the need for using and preserving microfilm. It will take many decades to digitize-not to forget to mention the expense- everything that is already on microfilm.
My grandfather worked for Kodak for over 40 years following WW2, specializing in microfilm. From what I understand, he worked with NASA during the Skylab missions to research techniques for using or developing microfilm in zero gravity. I wish I knew more to share here, but thats about it. My family still has some old plaques he received from Kodak, NASA, and (presumably) the same microfilm association group mentioned in this video. Thanks for the context around his life's work.
History in the form of microfiche occupied hours and hours of my time in the late 70's doing research backtraking years of articles in past journals. Which are for the most part still not available on the internet. Way to go THG! Showing how the history WAS remembered (deserving or not).
I have spent many many hours with both microfiche and microfilm. It all seemed so high tech at the time. And remember the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature?
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel Oh yes. But with myself it was purchasing entire technical journals on microfiche and after hours and hours of wading though index tables and watching the blur of pages rushing past and finally finding that one or two nuggets I was looking for that frames my microphotography experience. Afterwards usually donating the archive to whatever library whose microfiche machine I was using at the time.
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel The Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature!! Now, that’s a title I have not heard in a long time. Reminds me of my own history that deserves to be forgotten….
Speaking of spycraft, I wish you would do a history of knitting as a tool of espionage. For as long as people have been knitting, there have been men and women who used the intricate patterns oftentimes invented on the fly - as it were - to transmit information. This was going on even in World Wars 1 and 2. It is also history that deserves to be remembered. Also, when are you going to come out with a History Guy bowtie in your merch? I want to get them for my grandsons. Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah!
@@kleinjahr On a related note, there's the "rope memory" of the Apollo spacecraft computers, also known as "Little Old Lady memory", as the wires were sewn into place by sharp-eyed women workers.
Us older folks remember, pre internet, this was how you did college research!! Memories of penn state in mid to late 80s.. man I wish we had today's internet then!!!!
Great episode. Microfilm is also used for engineering drawings. In the '70's and '80's I worked as a mechanical and piping designer at the Hanford Nuclear reservation. All the original drawings were kept, but they were also microfilmed looked like on 35mm and mounted in a little window on an IBM card. A number of copies were made and kept in big trays in a large machines located throughout the site. You could rotate the trays and find the ones you were looking for. Then we could make a half sized photo copy of the ones we needed as reference for whatever we were working on instead of ordering a big full-sized copy of the original.
Amazing how microfilm was such a valuable part of the war effort during WWII. So many little pieces of information that contribute to a better understanding of the world around us. Thank you for educating us!
In the late 1970’s, I served as a volunteer researcher for an author writing a biography of Oregon Senator Wayne Morse. Microfilm and microfiche - newspapers, magazines, congressional committees testimony, etc. - became my life for several months. Without the microfilm and microfiche, it would have taken years. Mike
10:57 can't help but notice the "Glass Handle With Care" box has visible damage to it. As someone in the transport industry, I can't help but thinking "The more things change, the more things stay the same"
My Grandmother, born in 1903, had inherited a Cruifix with a tiny lens at it's center. If you look through it, you found the "Lord's Prayer"! Obviously another example of micro photography.
It seems my mother had a regular 2 X 2 slide that that had the entire Bible you could read through a microscope. She passed little over 10 years ago and I still have not gone thru a lot of her stuff, I probably have in now, but my microscope from from the 1950's no longer works.
I still have in my shop office several microfiche packs and a reader I used in the 1970's and 80's teaching agricultural mechanics in our local high school. The fiche were used by several small engine manufacturers for parts look-up and repair instructions as well as several tractor manufacturers for parts and technical information on their products. Computers and the internet have largely replaced these but they were state-of-the art at the time. Great program as always, THG!
I can remember the first time I had to do research for a project in 5th grade, I was looking around our small local library for the old newspapers, then the librarian said, "Oh you need to use the microfiche reader." Within minutes, 11-year-old me knew the value and importance of microfilm.
Great video once again, thank you. Very informative. I'm a big fan of microfilm. Here in the UK, every week, I trawl our local paper (all the way back to 1860), on microfilm, for local history stories, in our local library. I'm glad someone had the foresight to copy them all, what a treasure trove!
I'm 45 now. I remember the day when there was no internet. Just hundreds of hours looking through microfiche..... Bravo History Guy and Wife. Kids today will never know the hours of research we did when we were teenagers. Well at least me. History Guy's wife is too young to remember 🙂
My dad had little viewers that we used to view his photos from off shore. It has been about 25 years since I've seen microfilm in a library. Research was a bit more organized in library files than sorting through articles on the internet, but now we can browse from the comfort of home any time of day.
I was introduced to microfiche in the late 1990's, having a job @Truckland Amsterdam as a junior warehouse employee during the summer holidays... Because computers were not capable enough to combine technical drawings with the warehouse information. And because revisions were never put in the drawer, I spend countless hours not the phone with importer helpdesk and the factory in Eindhoven...
I tried to explain going to the library and using this in my college research projects to my children. They were confused why I would do that. No internet inthose days. This was a great video.
Absolutely fascinating! I graduated from high school in 1965. My first job after graduation was as a microfilm camera operator for the Kansas State Historical Society microfilming mostly old newspapers, with some State records occasionally thrown in. My boss was a WWII veteran who had learned the trade in the Army. Nice to learn its history.
Microforms are still used in libraries that need to own, preserve and disseminate information. Thank you for this video- warms the heart of a government information librarian
Very interesting history. I spent 40 years in the microfilm industry, starting in 1973. I was hired as a computer technician to repair Computer Output Microfilm systems (COM). These could take computer tapes and "print" them onto roll microfilm or microfiche. This was a very sophisticated system for the time, they cost about $200,000 each. The main use was to convert computer printout to microfiche which could be duplicated quickly. The original microfiche took about 90 seconds to film 268 pages, the copies would take less than 5 seconds each. We had many customers because we could produce large number of copies much quicker than they could print them on paper.
This was fascinating. I had no idea photography started so early. The part about V mail is especially interesting because I hadn’t seen the details of this in WWII movies or WWII history books.
Wandering Teacup....I knew about the early efforts in photography such as the Daguerreotype but not the early 'micro' photography...very interesting. And like you, even after watching hundreds of documentaries and movies about WWll, I do not remember ever seeing anything about the V-Mail...amazing..!!
My first "real" job back in the 80s when I started in Accounting at the largest bank in Virginia. My job was to film all the GL tickets to microfilm and spent too many hours reeling through the machine researching all kinds of items. We've come a long way. You never forget the sound those machines made. Thanks for the video...really enjoyed it.
Banks used to store all returned cheques, along with copies of statements, as microfilm images, processed by some central facilities as they were processed. This film was then stored, undeveloped, for the required retention time, then recycled for the silver content. As the banks rarely had to retrieve any information off any roll, they left them in the canisters undeveloped, as the cost of developing them was pretty expensive, and thy relied on the fact that most of the time a query would come in while they still had a paper copy or the original around to use. If there was a need for one of the images they would then develop the film, and hope that the scan had been successful, or at least came out readable. IIRC less than 1% would ever need the processing and development, saving a lot of money on film processing, plus at the end of the retention process the film was more valuable as scrap silver, as it still had all the original active halide salt in it. Then the film would go and get stripped of emulsion, and the silver recovered from this residue.
I'm doubtful about it being stored undeveloped. The chemicals are cheap and there are service bureaus (I used to work in one) that process miles of their own 105mm & 16mm film... and will process 3rd party film for a nominal fee. I can't imagine someone going to the expense of filming checks* and not spend the small additional amount to process it and make it safer from accidental destruction... not just from light exposure, but radiation and I think processed film would be less susceptible to water damage. In any case, if processed full reversal the vast amount of the silver will remain on the (negative image) film and can be recovered later. They already have to recover silver from the processing for environmental reasons. --- * both the machines to sort and film the checks likely require far more expensive human supervision than making some splices and letting a kilometer of film run through the processor in between other tasks.
@@danzaokid I used to work with computer-driven cameras designed in the 1960's that relied on an electro-mechanical solenoid to press the film into the focal plane, against the back of a lens assembly... emulsion pressed to hopefully flat, smooth metal. The biggest nightmare was the solenoid that was too slow or fast one frame in 10,000, resulting in a blurry page; blowing 6 hours of machine time. Processing mishaps were a close second; I've lost a kilometer-sized-run of 105mm film that way.
Fascinating stuff. I used the microfilm when I was in High School, but did not know all this was involved. Did know about V-Mail, but did not know it was microfilm. Thank You.
Microfiche, the tool every decent librarian and researcher eventually learns to use the viewing and printing devices for. I didn't realize it went back quite as far as it did in practical application. Thank you for this presentation, definitely worth watching.
I have an authentic Dagurreotype made in 1839. The French lady who gave it to me said that I need brown eggs 🥚 white to make the pictures clearer and lasting!
I owned a Polaroid land camera that had been modified for photographing documents. It came with an interesting array of lenses and a set of stands for the camera. I kept it in my collection of oddities for a couple of years, loaned it to a local museum for a year before finally donating it to another museum for their collection.
I worked at University Microfilm International from the 1990's until 2008. Scanning using computers and the internet essentially put an end to the micofilm business.
I worked there in the late 80s to about 1990 when the electronic publishing department was just getting off the ground. It was called epub at the time and proQuest was a product we were developing. At one point, we were running 24 hours a day, making black-and-white scans with super-slow scanners. Even with three shifts, we were no match for the throughput of the microfilm department, which was filming the New York Times everyday in addition to everything we scanned and the dissertation business.
Thank you for this video. I just wanted to let you know that I’m 37, and my first job was at a library. Among others duties, I had to help patrons lookup and show how to use microfilm and microfiche. 😊. I’m a physicist, a teacher, professor, and am working to become a power engineer for the grid. But I’m always proud that I still know how to use those. 😄
I enjoyed learning the history of microfilm. I remember sitting in the library digging through the microfilm to find the articles I needed for my term papers.
I remember doing that too, searching through the New York Times on microfilm. Thank God the Times had an index for each year in order to find articles that applied to subject being searched.
I had a keychain that had microfilm images of Star Trek aliens in it. Must’ve been made in the early 90s, as it had late season Next Generation ones too. It was made to look vaguely like a film camera.
In the late 80s and early 90s microfilm archives was my peek into the past of my city. It was fascinating and I loved going to my high school library and the local public library to indulge my inner history geek.
This episode brought back memories of my early career, going half blind reading survey plans from microfiche. The reader was a standard piece of equipment right next to my light table.
I remember the state determinations which I reviewed at FERC being reduced to microfiche in the early 1980’s. I also remember doing genealogical research from microfiche of newspapers during that same period of 1979-1983. Thank you for this blast from the past! C. P. Klapper
Skeptical about this being interesting enough to spend a quarter hour on, but once again, THG wins! Thanks for spending the time to bring us this obscure history. 😊👍
I always remember the comment on the video on the history of ketchup: Why do I need to know the history of ketchup? Wait...what is the history of ketchup?
@@johntabler349 Maybe I am weird but I found the episode on the first Presidential Unit Citation rather interesting although the ship that got it was rather pedestrian, the USS Pigeon.
For years my mother told me I was born on Friday the 13th. I think I was still less than 30 when I went to my local library and looked it up on microfilm of our local paper. I know now if this was after the internet was established along with personal computers I could have gone that route. But sure enough the local paper on that date showed it was Friday the 13th. On page two there was an article about worrying about the state of the Japaneese economy as they were still recovering from the second world war. That gave me a chuckle.
As a Communications Center Operator (2542 MOS) in the Marines in the early 80's, I was using microfiche on a day to day basis. Also in use at the time ... paper tape and IBM data punch cards used for military communications. No PC computers, OCR scanners etc. If you were to see old pictures of Western Union Offices and the large pieces of equipment that was in use, that was what we had to use. Our field communications gear was not light weight by any means.
Worked in Admissions and Records at SIU-C. Microfiche was kept in huge bins. They included a transcript for Clark Kent from Metropolis Illinois High School. He was born in Smallville, IL. His grades were respectable but excelled at physical fitness classes.
There's a whole host of newspapers that have, for whatever reason, never been digitized. The Los Angeles Express is the one that I can remember, that you can only find at the LA Central Library, and its only on microfilm.
I'm actually just old enough to remember microfilm and particularly microfiche in libraries. My mom would research news articles all the time using that, and I always thought it was pretty neat to have so much on one single piece of film. Pages and pages before she had to change out the microfiche and search on. The viewers had an enormous screen, too, about the size you'd see on an arcade cabinet.
The mention of V-Mail - I again think of how The History Guy and Mark Felton need to do a collab. Mark Felton made a video going into much more detail on V-mail (which he referred to as "WWII email") fairly recently, a great compliment to this video.
From that title I thought that sounded like the most boring subject imaginable - I was sure your video on it would be fascinating. I was not disappointed. Thanks History Guy!!
When I started in the insurance claims business in the early 1980s, we regularly used micro-fiche sheets to read historical policy data. You would be surprised how important that is in the claims business. While my company was on the the leading edge of computerization and digitization of policy, payment, and claims information, it was the decades of historical data the the micro-fiche records preserved that was vital. I spent many an hour using the machine that allowed me to view the 3"x 3" sheets (may have been a different size, I never measured them) on which the information of tens of thousands of policies on each sheet was stored.
I have fond memories of being in elementary school in the 70’s and using Microfilm to look things up for reports and projects. I can remember being amazed at how much information would be on one roll.
From 1979 to 1986, I worked as a programmer for a printing company that was an early adopter of the Xerox 9700 laser printer, which could print 2 pages per second, and in later models, double sided, with the input source being 9-track magnetic tape. There was an option (we did NOT acquire it) to produce microfiche from the 9-track tape. . . We watched a demo. . . but with the laser printer costing $500,000 by itself, the company decided to not go in that direction.
The company I worked for had both. We had at one time 12 - 9800 and 10 COM units. We printed mutual fund documents and provided the companies a copy on microfiche. In January 2000 I think we produced over 1 billion pages on paper and more on microfiche.
I have used microfiche a number of times with my mothers genealogy research over lots of year. I had no idea about how extensive it's use was dating back pre WW2.
The way that we remember history is one of the most important things to consider. I'm all for the lowest common denominator, which seems to be tiny photographs. I enjoy that a lot.
I worked at a Waldenbooks in the early nineties and we used the microfiche system for special ordering books. About once a month we would get updated fiches and throw out the old ones. While i was there they upgraded to an early computer system that was a little easier to work with.
I still have a few of those microfilm view finders they sold at the jersey shore and ocean city Maryland from back in the 90s me and my sister standing in the sand ocean behind us. I love those little things
When I was working for Cessna we had one group of people who spent their days retrieving engineering documents that were stored on microfilm and microfiche and scanning those images into the digital system. That was done as an on demand service for a long time before the effort shifted to getting all of the remaining drawings that had not been requested yet scanned as well. It's nearly a decade later and that group is probably still at that job because there were a LOT of documents.
I worked as a microfilmer, feeding a machine the documents as it snapped a photo. It was the coolest job I ever had. I am the type satisfied to be set in a corner and left alone.
When I was in high school, I worked for a company (Octo, Inc., in Laurel, MD) that microfilmed documents. I mainly used a Kodak flatbed camera which used 16mm film. Thanks for the interesting vlog!
Unbelievable! Simply amazing history. I was well aware of microfiche and it's use and was curious as to it's invention but as always the H.G brings the whole subject into the present and puts it into perspective. Thanks H.G ! 👍
One big use that you seem to have missed is a system developed by the U.S.navy in the late 1930`s as built blue prints of war ships were converted to microfilm and when any warship sustained damage beyond what could be fixed under way a Microfilm copy was sent the the nearest shipyard ,in many cases ships arived at the yard to find a replacement modual already built and if the damaged modual had been cut away the new one could be installed as soon as the ship was secured in a repair slip often saving weeks or even months of yard time.
I never knew the name of this film display process, but I recall that in the 80's I could get a souvenir keychain at amusement parks like Disneyland. They were about 1.5" long and had a lens on the small end. The other had a photo, usually taken at the top of a roller coaster. I wonder if they are still made?
There is something to be said about the advantage of a fairly low-tech storage medium like micro-film. Try to recover the data from a Zip Drive of only 20 years ago for instance.
Totally forgot about Zip Drives. Recall the first PC at work had a tape backup which could not be relied upon to backup when it was supposed to. The "clock" was confused between day/night and at times would start backup in mid day, irritating everyone in the office. Plus it emitted a high pitched noise. I don't miss that old PC stuff.
Enjoyed this episode very much. My Mom worked with microfilm during WW2. As a high school student in the 1970s I worked in a public library. Part of my job was to help patrons with the microfilm and microfiche readers. I did not know that some of the film could last 500 years. It would be interesting to know what current technology will preserve documents in the future.
I minored in photography in college and like to shoot with 35mm black and white film and I learned more about the history of photography from this video than I ever did in college or from my own studying.
In 1941 Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 while the Soviet city of Leningrad (today St. Petersburg) was under siege by the Germans. His hand written score was microfilmed and smuggled out of Leningrad, via Tehran to the West. The microfilmed score found it way to Arturo Toscanini who led the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a radio broadcast performance on July 19, 1942.
A very mundane, but immensely useful technology! I'm very very familiar with Microfilm and Microfiche from my college days spent scrolling through rolls for research projects. Its nice to hear about the origins after so much time spent with the media.
Found memories of doing research for my High School History Term Paper at the Library of Congress in the 1970's. Most of what I got there was on microfilm including Congressional testimony.
At 9:35 an aperture card is depicted. These were usually employed for large quantities of engineering documents. Microfiche is a piece of film 105mm x 148mm, usually for rapid retrieval of file (8.5" x 11") documents. 16mm roll film was often used for 'deep archival' files of historical documents. 35mm roll film was used for slow retrieval of archived engineering documents. Yes, I maintained (and used) these formats. Shortly after dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
worked at hanford in washing state I filmed all annual health records on 16mm, plus our team filmed in 35mm wide format. after i processed the films two originals one was for storage other we copied making five copies for the library.
I really like browsing old newspapers on microfilm, it feels much closer to the experience of reading the original than seeing it on a computer screen.
Liked the clip. What the 'Guy' might have mentioned is that many of the techniques were applied or are applied to the microlithography needed to manufacture chips.
First time I remember encountering microfilm was in my 3rd year of college, when I had a work-study position in the campus library. I was looking up newspaper and magazine articles several times a week, and was entranced by the possibilities. A couple of years after graduating, a company I worked for used microfiche technology for medical records, and I learned a tiny bit about creating the records (though I worked in another department. Points for hanging out with everyone!)
Polyester film - shelf-life 500 years. Cuneiform - shelf-life 5000 years and counting. Digital format - shelf-life depends on the proximity of nearest fridge magnet.
@@davidhealdjr.513 I can remember bulk erasing reel-to-reel takes when I worked at my college radio station in the mid-60's. We would wave the reel in a complex pattern over a magnetic field producing device and all information on the tape would be scrambled.
The woman that tried to prove that she was magnetized by vaccination, by sticking a brass (LOL) key to her face, must have spent too much time at her refrigerator door. 🤣
@@rabbi120348 - we still did this in the 80's at the university station I worked at. Had to make sure you were doing it to the right reel/cart. Only messed up once. Thankfully, it wasn't something important.
