Re: Content for the deep archive (time capsule)

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Brewster Kahle
Mon, 16 Feb 1998 12:21:37 -0800


For 10k books for 10k years, that is 75 2" disks for $200k. Can we make
additional copies cheaper (as I recall they were working on that).

detail: at 150 pages/book and $0.15/page that is $22.50/book. For 10k
books that is $225,000 for the collection. at 20k pages/disk, that is
133books per disk, or 75 disks. I would shoot for 10k books because 1k
will be difficult to select.

-brewster

At 11:39 AM 2/16/98 -0800, Alexander Rose wrote:
>Just spoke with the COO of Norsam Tech. (http://www.norsam.com) and got
>some interesting figures. First of all they have chosen this 2" medium
>for their "HD Rosetta" product. It is a 1-5000 year medium. This is of
>course dependant on usage and care. they use a gallium beam to etch
>onto silicon and then transfer it to a 300 micron thick nickel wafer.
>(I also found that they could etch onto other things like Stainless
>Steel and Iridium which would last far longer for a higher substrate
>cost.)
>
>The current cost breakdown if you just walked in and wanted one of these
>made up:
>
>- They will write your scanned pages for 15 cents per page. (300 dpi B&W
>text 8.5x11)
>- The optical reader that will plug into a server is about $7000
>- If you want your own writer it is $750,000
>
>This production method was only introduced in August of last year and
>will obviously be coming down in cost as volume goes up. they are
>currently working with the National Archive, and a couple others to do
>tests on high volume production.
>
>Also to remain visible to an optical microscape they are writing in the
>100-130 nanometer pixel size. There is room on one of these disks for
>20,000 pages at this scale. But they can write as small as 7 nm
>allowing for 1.5 million pages per disk, but this would require a far
>more powerful microscope to read.
>
>--
>Alexander Rose
>(Executive Director)
>
>The Long Now Foundation 415.561.6582
>"fostering long term responsibility" FAX.561.6297
>
> http://www.longnow.org
>
>
>


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