On 5/10/19 2:57 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: With no first-hand knowledge, I would assume that NSA also used such. > > Half a century ago, when I worked at The National Space Science Data > Center (NASA, Greenbelt) we dealt with a lot of data. But that is like > a floppy compared to NSA, especially the Utah Data Center!
I have some passing experience with the IBM 1360 photostore that was at Lawrence Livermore, but that was strictly digital, using a photographic medium to archive inactive files. (WikiP has a section on the 1360 and, in the same entry, briefly touches on WALNUT). There were bootleg programs in distribution to access one's online files periodically, so that they wouldn't be "photostored" because of inactivity. The system was generally not well-loved. Reading about WALNUT, it was more than a little unusual for its time. The idea was the setup stored (photographically) almost a million images using a non-silver process. The images were indexed digitally and the index was searchable. The output appears to be a standard aperture card. Although both of the references that I found mention Kalfax/Kalvar media, WikiP says that the systems delivered to the CIA used a different diazo process that was apparently more stable than the Kalvar process. --Chuck
