Photograph thanks to a computer
This is the view someone would have seen of Saratoga around 1900 from the vantage point of the present Canyon View Drive.
Saratoga Stereopticon
Museum finds computers history-friendly
By Willys Peck
I won't admit to kicking and screaming, but I will admit to being dragged into the late 20th century, and in a museum of the past at that.
I'm referring to our own Saratoga Historical Museum--hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m.--where recently acquired computer hardware and software has brought us into the late 20th century and, no doubt, the 21st (starting 1-1-01). The architect of this electronic epiphany is Saratoga resident Don Armstrong, a retired systems engineer with Kaiser Electronics in San Jose who has joined the Historical Foundation board of directors.
I spent a recent afternoon at the museum with Don, and his explanation of the equipment and its capabilities added a new dimension to the term "mind-boggling." Take the pictures, for instance. The museum has approximately 3,000 photographs dating back as far as the 1870s, and (mind-boggler No. 1) these are being preserved on a disc the size of a CD (I no longer call them phonograph records). This transference is accomplished by a device I equate with the philosophers' stone of the ancient alchemists, those worthies who sought a substance that could change baser metals to gold and, along the way, prolong life. The stone's modern-day counterpart, as used in a computer scanner, can interpret color and intensity as electronic impulses that are stored on a disc. Through this means, the hard disc that constitutes the guts of a computer can hold (mind-boggler No. 2) 50,000 pictures.
Called up individually on a computer screen through the medium of CD-size discs, these pictures can be enhanced as to contrast, and enlarged so that minute details can be discerned. Then they can be printed out.
Don showed me the CD on which the first 260 pictures of the museum's collection have been stored. They occupy a quarter-inch band on the 4 3/4-inch disc. Lots more room to go. In somewhat similar fashion, documents such as letters and newspapers can be stored by means of optical character recognition, or OCR, software used with the scanner. Going even further, museum artifacts can be photographed and the images stored on discs.
The net result is that a museum's entire contents--pictorial, documentary and artifactual--can be stored on these discs, for viewing on the museum premises or available on a website. The Saratoga Museum is not yet in that league.
The question might well be asked, why bother with a museum if everything is on discs? One obvious answer is that viewing the actual object, be it artifact, picture or document, has greater intellectual impact, plus the recreational element inherent in visiting an interesting place. Another obvious answer is that the discs can preserve the essence of often priceless items in the event of disaster, such as a fire.
There's another angle that Don mentioned, one with anthropological overtones: tribal knowledge. In the high-tech industry, he said, the term is used to describe necessary information that is communicated personally, handed down from generation to generation, if you will. In another context, it's known as folklore. In a museum connotation, it's oral history. Let's face it: Those who have experienced significant events of the past are only mortal. Their stories, unless preserved, die with the individual.
There is much to be done locally in this field, and the Historical Foundation could use some high-tech volunteers. Is there anybody out there?
Don will be explaining his project at the next Historical Foundation membership meeting on Jan. 24, 2000, in the Community Library at 7:30 p.m.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
