Internet Archive's homemade book scanner is pretty impressive

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

 

 

 

Photos: Internet Archive

 

The overhead glass comes down and presses the book flat, but on an angle and not a 180. Then it take 2 photos...one of each page.

I have been working as an informal volunteer for the I.A. for 7 + years. Over that time I've donated over a hundred thousand items to their collection. Some of it very rare. I had asked them if they could help buy me a cheap cine’ sound film scanner. I have about a million feet of film on roughly 1,100 reels that need scanning. The Internet Archive could also get the digital output donated from it. They would not give me a penny towards buying a scanner…actually they pester me all the time to give them money. 

Since I finished the eBay Adult Only Archive project I've got back into flat bed scanning. (The eBay project ended up as 28,000+ screen shots and photos.) In a few weeks I will be bored with flat bed scanning and will get out my Retroscan cine' scanner. I got a fantastic 16mm sound film from the late 40's / early 50's called 'One Enchanted Evening' to scan. It will make a good project for the AEO Light optical sound extracting software. As of yet I've only tested AEO Light but have not done any films with it. I will have to go the distance with AEO Light and 'One Enchanted Evening' will be a good film to do it with for my AEO Light debut. 

If it works out I will send in a copy for your perusal. But it won't fly on YouTube and scared to try with Vimeo. Surprisingly Vimeo had taken a super rare hardcore 1920s film called the 3 Graces I submitted. But they banned me a few weeks after I sent it in. I complained and they reinstated the film and my account. But all the links I used for my account were dead after that and had to be redone. So it is not worth the hassle with them.

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.