The Coast Guard was looking into digitizing its photographic collection, so
the chief historian took a problematic photo over to the Navy to wash it
through their system and see what came out as a print. The photo was a
Sikorsky helo on the ground taken from grass-level. In the original photo
you can clearly make out individual blades of grass in the foreground, a
person in the cockpit, and another flyer walking in front of the helo. In
the digitized printer-printed image, all this detail washed out and showed
up as dark shadows. Since this technology isn't really close to giving
publishing-quality images, I don't think the CG will be moving toward it any
time soon.

The standard disclaimers from a former Coastie archivist.

Amy Marshall
At 12:18 AM 4/25/96 -0600, you wrote:
>
>  Interesting discussion.  By the way, the US Navy is so proud of itself that
>it is embracing digital technology as, you guessed it, an archiving medium...
>
>
>  Disclaimers:  A.  Only applies to the "operators", i.e. technical
>documentation, not (as far as I know) historical documents.  BUT, the
>battleships, for instance, were around a lot longer than the touted 35 year
>storage life of a CD-ROM...
>                       B.  I'm a recently retired Naval line officer who had
>a hand in this ill-advised decision, so I'm allowed to throw rocks  :)
>
>                       Regards,
>
>                                  Mark Bacin, Ventura County Maritime Museum
>