MANY COMPANIES FIGHT THE PAPERWORK PILEUP WITH AID OF MICROFORMS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP72-00450R000100260029-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 4, 1999
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: September 28, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 19
9/10/13 CIA-RD 72 00450
Wallet Libraries
Many Companies Fight
The Paperwork Pileup
With Aid of Microforms
Small Pieces of Film Contain
Thousands of Pages; Links
With Computers Are Tried
Bible Is Two Inches Square
By Li*: BE:RTON
fit rift Brporlrr of Tina WALL STRTm r JOURNAL
Nf;W YORK-The reader of the not-
too-dis-tant future may carry In his pocket the com-
plete works of Shakespeare, the whole Ency-
clopaedia Britannica and a filing cabinet full
of office paperwork-all on a few wallet-sized
plastic cards.
This Is the dream of the companies now
producing microforms-tiny pieces of plastic
that can hold a staggering amount of printed
information reduced to microscopic size. The,.
Lord's Prayer engraved on the, head of a pin,
for , example, looks like a roadside billboard
compared with the printing job below.
This is a microfilm produced by National
Cash Register Co. to plug a new filing system
it. is offering. The two-inch square contains
NCR THE
MICROIMAGES HOLY BIBLE
P C M I ]Hi NAIIONLL CASH CLGIy,(q COMMNV
all 1,245. pages of one edition of the King
James Bible-each page about the size of a
paramecium, the one-celled animal that gen-
erations of biology students have squinted at
through microscopes. In its new filing system,
NCR promises. to condense as many as 3,-
200 pages on?a four-by'six-inch piece of film.
The microform is fast becoming a major
tool of business in its struggle to cope with the
paperwork explosion. Across the country, cor-
porations and other users are compressing
scores of cubic feet of conventional documents
into microforms' that would barely fill a shoe
box. They are finding it it lot easier to store,
update and retrieve information from micro-
forms than from roll microfilm, a principal
medium for records storage since the 1920s. In
some cases, they have launched a double-
barreled attack on paperwork bulk by having
computers print their output on the tiny pieces
of film.
i Microforms-or microfiche, as such super-
'reduced film transparencies are often called-
got a mighty boost from Uncle Sam in July
1964, when the Government decided to use
them in distributing technical reports from de-
fense agencies to businesses. "Since then fiche
has been the wave of the future in office pa-
perwork simplification," says James Hughes,
editor of Systems, a magazine dealing with
time and space saving in business procedures.
A few months ago the U.S. Patent Office
granted a $2 million contract to Recordak, a
subsidiary of Eastman Kodak Co., to put all
the 3,250,000 patents granted by the office since
1790 on small cards with microform windows,
known in the trade as aperture cards. Edward
J. Brenner, commissioner of patents, says the
cards will release much-needed space at the
patent office and save an estimated $500,000 j
a year in the cost of filling demand for 25,000
copies of patents every day.
Fiche producers' dream:i of a wallet-sized
library for the general reader may become
reality before too long. At leant two major
popular publinhcrs are eomn(Iering p; ttLug outs
reference end education vohnnos on fiche, at
sharply reduced prices. "This could mean a
revolution in the book and magazine field,"
says one fiche manufacturer.
Wanted: A Cheap Reader
Such a development would hinge on the per-
fection of a low-priced device to "blow up"
the microform images so they could be read.
Current prices of such "readers" generally
range between $100 and $400. "It won't be
long, once mass production of microforms
takes hold in the popular publishing field, be-
fore they could be much less expensive," says
Alex Baptie, president of the National Micro-
film Association.
At present, the business world is the biggest'
customer for fiche. Users send their paper-
work or roll microfilm to a specialist concern
for reduction and get back microforms ready
for the reader, The reduction processes vary
from maker to maker, but generally speaking
they rely on a system of high-performance
lenses and film capable of reproducing ex-
tremely tiny images without blurring. ,
NCR uses a film coated with a layer of
photosensitive dye one molecule thick. It dark-
ens where ultraviolet light strikes it. This
"photochromic" film has. no "grain" at all,
so extremely tiny images can be reproduced
on it without any blurring or fuzziness.
Users of microfiche report big savings in of-
fice space and in time taken to retrieve in-
formation. Since last September National
Acme Co., a Cleveland-based machine tool
maker, has spent $35,000 putting 8,000 of its
11,000 customer files on microfiche. It now
stores them in a space a couple of typewriters
could occupy, compared with 38 feet of files
in the basement previously required. Richard
Kozel, National Acme's supervisor of engineer-
ing records, says it only takers a clerk 30 sec-
onds to find specifications for replacement,
parts of retooling on a customer order com-
pared with up to 10 minutes under the old
conventional file system.
It also Is easier to find a given reference
page on fiche than on conventional roll micro-
film. Fiche cards can be numbered in columns
across the top and rows along the side, and
contain an index telling the data seeker where
to find the page he wants-say column 40,
PleaseTurn to Page 12, Column 2
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 Approved For Release 1999/10/13,: CIA-RDP72-0045OR000100260029-3
Wallet Libraries Many Companies
Shrink. Paperwork With Microf orms
Continued From Page One
row 17. The reading machine is capable, of
moving to the desired reference page quickly.
A user of roll microfilm has to crank his way
laboriously through the roll.
The Micro Photo division of Bell & I#owell
Co. conducted a study showing that retrieval
of one page of information from 40,000 pages
stored on 700 pieces of fiche took an average
of 10 seconds. "The, same search would take
more than a minute on a microfilm' roll of
2,400 images and updating the ` latter Would
mean reprocessing the whole roll; updating
-fiche would involve processing only a single
mlcrocard," says , Milton Mandell, division
manager.
This makes fiche particularly well suited
for "active files--those consulted often or re-
quiring frequent updating. In the latter case,
the cost of maintaining files on fiche can be
one-tenth the cost of keeping, them on roll
microfilm, according to officials of companies
turning out both products. For "dead" files
ordinary roll' microfilm- is generally best, these
companies add.
There are plenty of other applications for
fiche. The Micro Catalog division of Thomas
Publishing Co. has complete descriptions and
other information about 21,000 products of
1,350 vendor companies on fiche. Organized
into "micro-catalogs," the information is sold
to some 800 subscriber companies who pay
$320 for the "books" and $155 annually for
-updating. Customers who formerly needed a
full wall of filing cabinets to keep the same
information can now store. it in a shoe box-
sized container. Thomas, a big user of fiche,
also publishes other information on it.
The Republic Aviation division of Fairchild
Hiller Corp. Is now studying better ways to
put library material- on fiche, under a $65,000
contract from the Council on Library Re-
sources. Republic has come uu) 'with a fiche
that will hold 9,801 pages on a four-by-five-
inch piece of film and enable a person to find
a given page on it within seconds with the
aid of an electronic viewer system.
and present patients on fiche. The information,
which used to fill six rooms, now occupies a
few file cabinets in one room.
"We can now find patient records in sec-
onds compared to up to 10 hours before," says
Elizabeth Price, hospital medical records li-
brarian. "This speed could easily save lives by
enabling us to find the proper medication for
a person quickly."
Atlantic Microfilm Corp. In Spring Valley,
N.Y., says demand for its microfiche by hos-
pitals has tripled in less than two years. At-
lantic now does work for more than 600 hos-
pitals.
Information specialists believe that fiche
has applications almost without limit. D.A.T.A.,
Inc., an Orange, N.J., concern, is now putting
on file 25,000 specification sheets for the 5.750
types of transistors available in the U.S. The
imprinted fiche is for sale to commercial and
government customers. The chemical engineer-
ing section of Borden Co. is condensing paper-
work on building specifics tions for six petro-
chemical plants into a small file box of fiche;
the data previously occupied 24 feet of shelf
space. A major chain, store retailer and an
auto company are considering putting product
and parts catalogs on fiche to save thousands
of dollars in mailing and reprinting costs.
As the paperwork shrinks, fiche makers'
fortunes expand. Albert Dunning, a consultant
who recently completed a study for the micro-
film association, estimates total sales for the
industry will soar.to $500 million a year by 1970
from $350 million last year. The 1964 volume
was $300 million. "There's no question the big
push has come from fiche," he says. He adds
that corporate giants such as International
Business Machines ' Corp., Xerox Corp. and
Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. are
taking hard looks at the industry's potential,
and have moved into some phases of it al-
ready.
"One day it may be possible to put an en-
tire encyclopedia or ,all the 'outstanding re-
search on insects on a few film cards that
could be scanned for a specific page within
microseconds by a digital computer," theorizes
an official of Republic.
Some fiche users already are teaming com-
puters with the tiny film cards. Mr. Baptie,
head of the microfilm association and also
president of Microcard Corp., West Salem,
Wis., says a mail order house (one of his cus-
tomers) is perfecting a method of storing cred-
it ratings??and other information about custom-
ers in a computer and getting "readout" on
fiche. When an order comes in, the customer's
name is fed' to the computer. Information
about the prospective buyer then is transform-
ed. into fiche on the spot and displayed on a
screep. The fiche is then filed for future ref-
erence.
According to Mr. Baptie, this method will
speed order handling and credit checking, and
cut down the need for dozens of thick books
containing such information. "The retailer
ought to save thousands of dollars a year and
cut down on storage space, too," he says.
Hospitals are finding fiche a boon. Since
April 1965, St. Luke's Presbyterian in Chicago
has spent $85,000 to put data on 150,000 past
Approved . A-RDP72-00450R000100260029-3