[RightWhale]

Fiche was not a great technology. Modern scanning is. A world of difference.

[orionblamblam]

Doesn't matter how wonderful scanning is, if the originals are no longer readable. I have more than a few drawings that were originally on vellum, then microfilmed, printed out blurry, allowed to fade in the sun, microfilmed again, printed out at reduced scale and then photocopied several times. Then a cat whizzed on 'em.

[XBob]

119 - "Fiche was not a great technology. Modern scanning is. A world of difference."

I agree, however, that was one of the major technologies used to 'store' the space age drawings, and because of it, they have 'disappeared', literally. I know, I spent weeks sometimes trying to 'read' or identify required parts from drawings. On numbers of occasions, I had to give up, go back to the salvage area, and literally put a micrometer to an actual part, get two tech's and an engineer or two, to agree on a 'best' description (materials,sizes,etc), and the 'pray' it would fit after we went out and had it specially built.