I appologize for being rude, it is not my normal mode, and was uncalled for.
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I do not believe the document released was simply retreived from some database as presented. I am convinced it was conjured.
Some reasons.
1. There were no digital document management systems in 1961.
2. The early systems for eliminating paper copies was microfiche.
http://www.thecrowleycompany.com/scanning-equipment/faqs.html
“In 1989, Mekel Technology introduced the first microfilm scanner to the world, followed closely by its first microfiche scanner.”
3. PDF format documents began use in 1993.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format
Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open standard for document exchange. This file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems.[2] Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, graphics, and other information needed to display it.
PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008
4. I don’t know when HI Department of Health undertook to create a document image database (or if they have). A database for indexing is one thing, but a database as you described is another. In a high tech company what you described might be possible, but I do not believe that a state department could pull off what you describe. And it would be a fairly recent development. So, I am confident they still have the original documents up to some date and after that date the data is stored in an image format scanned from paper. That storage system is probably in a .pdf format, it is an open standard now.
5. Electronic document management (EDM) systems are a fairly recent technology. In the mid 1990’s they were beginning to become successful in business environments.
So without 1st hand knowledge of the system in place in HI Dept. of Health, I doubt their COLB’s are stored in a fragmented form, even today.
Sorry it is just not credible.
1. The original is obviously paper. That’s why the upper left corner denotes curvature. The original paper artifacts include bending, preprinted plus typed content (and distortions common then and near-unheard-of today), poor quality troubling to subsequent processing, etc.
2a. I presume the documents were transferred to microfiche at a suitable time, causing some [more] distortion in the image. At one time this was impressive technology.
2b. The documents may have been scanned from paper instead. Either way lines up with my experience of the era.
2c. Either way, when talking massive libraries of governmental records, storage space was at a premium. Clever (and now problematic) space-saving techniques were applied to block out needed sections, save different parts at different qualities (signatures deemed important, typed or form text less so), and store only blocks that mattered; this saved a LOT of space, and the pieces would be used to reconstruct a legal copy. I remember this technique as being “oh-wow cool” tech.
3. How the document is later rendered depends on what is needed and what technologies are available. The image components having been saved at varying sections and resolutions, an add-on package could be provided later to generate PDF or other late-model document formats. So long as we’ve got the original data, we can render it into any modern format, which may be a bit of a hack job (but it works sufficient for legal needs).
4. Large-scale document automation systems have been around for a long time. Governments are a prime candidate for early adoption: they’ve got vast archives to digitize, and near-unlimited funds to do it with. A state department would indeed be an early adopter of such technology. The data is probably still stored in some fairly old format, converted to PDF as needed.
5. I remember studying industrial-scale document automation products around 1986, and recall the document compression process I’m harping on.
HI having gone thru all the effort to digitize vast mountains of governmental paperwork, and having certified legal equivalence thereof, there is no bureaucratic need to either re-scan everything from the originals nor to re-render the data into non-fragmented form. (Remember: classic mainframes and massive COBOL systems still process enormous volumes of data. Those systems still work, and the enormous cost of upgrading isn’t worth the cost of straight maintenance.) They’ve got the data, the system works, you ask for a copy of an original BC in HI and they’ll give you a legal copy generated to PDF from the fragmentary varying-resolution data stored in “ancient” file formats. It’s not just credible, it’s sensible: why spend millions to overhaul legal data to produce output that looks exactly the same and takes up orders of magnitude more storage? Legacy systems don’t go away: all too often they’re cheaper to maintain than replace, and “how it works” isn’t sufficiently documented anywhere other than the source code and/or executables; it works, it’s not broken, don’t fix it just because it’s old (their mantra, not mine).
They may or may not have the originals. Since the digital copies are legal equivalents, and messing with decades-old paper is time-consuming and damaging, when you pay your $20 for a copy you’ll get the rendered digital version, not a photocopy of the actual original (hence my Zapruder example).
Eminently sensible.