Machine Tool of Management: A History of Microfilm Technology

Microphotography was invented in England in 1839--the same year as the daguerreotype. It served primarily as a curiosity for more than seventy-five years while photographic technology continued to evolve. By the early twentieth century the push of this advancing technology, readily available even to amateurs in the form of snapshot and home movie cameras, was augmented by the market pull of large bureaucratic organizations generating ever increasing quantities of paper documents. In 1926 George McCarthy, Vice-President of a New York bank, invented the "Check-O-Graph," a rotary microfilm camera for copying bank checks automatically. He promptly granted his rights to the Eastman Kodak Company in return for the presidency of Recordak, a new division created to manufacture and market the technology. Microfilm was rapidly adopted by banks in the 1930s and by other industries and government agencies. Libraries, anxious to expand access to resources required by a burgeoning research community, also adopted it. Although academic enthusiasts predicted that microfilm would revolutionize scholarship, the limitations of reading machinery precluded an unmitigated success. Foundations, corporations, and entrepreneurs made repeated efforts over decades to design better readers and printers. By harnessing microfilm during World War II for diverse purposes (V-Mail, espionage, document storage and preservation), the military increased popular awareness of the technology. From this period forward, the military served as patron, consumer, defacto standards setter, and arbiter for many facets of micrographics. In the postwar period a highly competitive industry expanded into new areas. New formats (microcards, microfiche, aperture cards) and experimental retrieval machines that coupled microfilm with automatic searching mechanisms overcame some of the barriers to effective retrieval of filmed material. The National Microfilm Association, founded in 1944 and revitalized in 1952, sought to protect the industry from foreign competition, sloppy entrepreneurs, and opposition from paper interests. As the computer rose to dominance, microfilmers discovered that microfiche could offer an effective distribution medium for voluminous computer output. The permanent storage medium became the disposable one. In the 1990s microfilm's continued existence is threatened by digital imaging technologies and online communications.