When Mary moved here she had a collection of 3.5" floppies with her
early poetry on them... she wasn't sure what she had and hadn't had a
floppy drive to look at them with since the 90s. As it turned out I
had a USB floppy reader I had bought to help someone else recover their
history and she copied everything onto her hard drive... a few of the
floppies were unreadable... I don't remember the details (5 years ago?)
I believe that deep in my shed there is a mid 80s PC with a 5.25"
internal floppy drive... <sigh>. I also had a "core memory" artifact
from one of the earlyish LASL machines in my office for decades but I
can't remember when/where I let it go.
I remember a Sandia? Engineer who I would occasionally encounter on
flights in/out of ABQ and layovers. He would carry a small stack of
punch cards that he used to take notes on and when anyone would ask him
about them, he would tell them about the history of such items and
offer to sell them one for $1, and apparently many, many people took him
up on that deal... a good deal by some measure for everyone. I saw him
sell at least 5 or 6 in the times I was in his presence (on the plane,
waiting for a flight, etc). and I wonder where all those strange little
artifacts ended up? Ed or someone else on the same flight paths I was on
in those days might know who he is? Sandia Engineers (and Scientists)
were easy to spot in airports, esp. ABQ... maybe LANL too, but Sandia
had a particular signature "look"? The cards were probably Sandia
property and there is probably a waste/fraud/abuse scandal to be had in
there somewhere... gak!
I also used to collect exposed 35mm film from garage sales and friends
going digital? Why would anyone have *exposed* film? Nobody knows
exactly... I assume the transition time when someone would deprecate an
old camera (after going digital) would lead to at least *one* roll of
film in the old camera half-exposed. I kept them in a ziplock freezer
bag, thinking that *someday* I would (hand) process them all as a sort
of performance-art experience. Instead I encountered someone about 5
years ago who was doing a similar thing and I simply gave my collection
(20 or more) of exposed rolls to them (along with a similar number of
frozen unexposed rolls).
I also expect that abandoned USB sticks and micro/mini/SD/??? cards will
also be an interesting Archeological find someday. I have a 4"
diameter metal pipe core to my spiral staircase with an open (capped)
top which I have come to use as a "time capsule". Every few weeks I have
a small collection of artifacts that have no proper use but are
entertaining in their own right that I drop down there. I have at least
3 or 4 USB sticks layered in there. I don't know exactly how deep my
collection is... I've been doing this casually for years but only with
small and acutely (at the moment) interesting items... Maybe 1 foot
deep more or less? The presumption is that decades from now the house
(owner-built in the early 80s) will burn down or be bulldozed to put in
some ultra-modern thing and the spiral staircase will be the last thing
standing and *maybe* someone will notice as 1000 tiny bits of gak flow
out of the pipe as they haul it off. Or not. I've been tempted to cut
a tiny "door" in the bottom to provide access, but that would ruin the
conceit I think. Maybe paint a "fairy door" in the same location to
suggest to a curious person to do so? MMmmmMM?
I would drop the old floppy and a (newer) DVD-USB drive down the hole as
a "bootstrap", but they are both too big.
On 9/14/22 10:09 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/we-spoke-with-the-last-person-standing-in-the-floppy-disk-business/#:post_86454
=======================
Tom Johnson
Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, New Mexico
505-577-6482
=======================
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