Posted on 08/05/2006 7:34:12 AM PDT by oxcart
Good luck keeping a 50 year old B&W 2" Quad machine running for the next 20 years. Even if you do, good luck keeping a 70 year old magnetic tape from shedding all of it's oxide as you attempt to play it back.
Nowadays, you can extract the information from an LP using nothing but a laser, so it may be possible in the future to have an equally non-contact method of recovering the magnetic information pattern from tape, then process it digitally. But keeping the original machines to read the stuff is not feasable.
I think the likely explanation for that is that RFK took custody of his brother's brain from the National Archives, and either buried it or cremated it himself. Bobby was afraid that JFK's brain would go on display some day for future generations, and he didn't want that to happen.
It is. We're talking literally millions of tapes. Stuff like the Apollo tapes is back in a corner someplace, lying there unaccessed for years.
Reminds me of the last scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
HF
I agree absolutely. Don't junk the meduim just because you can't read it today. If it has historical significance, at some point a new method of reading it will be created.
He's back as taxesareforever. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1683209/posts?page=134#134
LOL!! I was going right there when I clicked this thread!
Just last week I was chatting with my 9 year old daughter in the car and a big full moon was before us down the highway.
I started talking about how when I was her age, the last mission to the moon had been completed.
She was in disbelief! "You mean people walked on the moon?"
All of a sudden, the time warp vortex toke hold of me and I could barely stay on the road after realizing what an old codger I had become!
In the early 70's, I was a kid and even though I saw stuff on the news about Vietnam, I was much more interested in space travel! Landing on the moon was a thrill and still a big topic of discussion at the time. As a young boy I had military toys and space toys. To me, dreaming about landing on the moon is like I just did it yesterday!
So I started to explain how it started, how the tiny capsules would be used, and of course, Armstrong's famous line.
I have since showed her some books I managed to keep from the 70's that explained the complicated maneuvers in space that had to happen. I haven't watched Apollo 13 with her yet but will soon.
It's hard to believe that the space program is barely even spoken about in school. I'm sad that of the many things from my childhood we've discussed, that this was the first time talking about space travel.
LOL!
I got to this thread by googling Harry Callahan to make sure I had the correct reference.
Worst loss since we lost the "A" in Armstrong's first step speech: "That's one small step for [a] man....."
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