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documentation, not (as far as I know) historical documents.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 >