Losing Our Memory/The Museum of Obsolete Technology

by David S. Ferriero

If the future of microfilm is in some dispute, then what can be said about some truly obsolete technologies. How many archives have their own hardware morgues or Computer Museums, where machines are kept on hand able to read floppies in 8-inch, 51/4 -inch or 31/2 -inch formats?

At Archives II in College Park, Maryland, we have our own museum in the Department of Special Media Preservation. Here you’ll find a recording device that uses coils of thin steel wire instead of tape. There are 70,000 18-inch glass discs —each with two hours of enemy radio broadcasts from World War II. They play on a Memovox. There are push-pull movie sound-tracks —1800 reels. There are a quarter million optical discs—the cutting edge technology of the 1980s—that depend on software and hardware no longer on the market. All of these technologies are less than a century old, and yet, the materials may be gone.

While the quantity of information saved has increased dramatically over the centuries, the durability of media has decreased exponentially. That is to say, the clay tablets from ancient Sumeria can still be seen today, medieval manuscripts on animal parchment are perfectly readable, and paper correspondence from the Renaissance is still in good condition. But the floppies of our recent past are all but useless. What is the shelf-life of an 8-track tape? Can anybody here remember WordPerfect? FoxPro? Netscape Navigator? Where have you gone, MS-DOS?

But, as Alexander Stille points out in his book The Future of the Past, "books printed on modern acidic paper are turning to dust. Black-and-white photographs may last a couple of centuries, while most color photographs become unstable within thirty or forty years. Videotapes deteriorate much more quickly than does traditional movie film. And the latest generation of digital storage tape is considered to be safe for about ten years, after which it should be copied to avoid loss of data."