We are barely halfway done

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4711

by pmorici • 11 years ago

487 74 11 years ago

ascii.textfiles.com

tmuir• 11 years ago

I've noticed that a lot of headlines on HN are intentionally vague, to pique reader's interest. I'm not sure what being intentionally vague for an entire article is supposed to accomplish.

What is it that is barely halfway done?

sdrothrock• 11 years ago

I'm not sure what being intentionally vague for an entire article is supposed to accomplish.

This isn't an article, though. It's someone's personal blog and the continuation of something else; the assumption is that you've read the other ones.

He's talking about the process of saving a huge amount (25k?) of paper manuals from someone who was going to throw them out.

azinman2• 11 years ago

Which is no longer a useful assumption when pages can be independently displayed and linked, and then disseminated. I had to look at these comments to even understand that my guess was somewhat true.

Maxious• 11 years ago

Well also to comply with https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

mindcrime6• 11 years ago

And this is a perfect example of a time when using the original title is stupid. There's absolutely no good reason to insist on original titles for their own sake, when the original title is meaningless, lacks context, or is otherwise inadequate - none of which are necessarily the same thing as "misleading or linkbait".

Too• 11 years ago

Isn't this title misleading? I thought it would be about real time operating systems.

lnanek2• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, HN only allows the original title, which results in crappy titles that weren't designed for the context of a social news site so often leaves readers clueless.

dang5• 11 years ago

HN only allows the original title

Read the HN guidelines and you'll see that that's not true.

bane• 11 years ago

The extra context comes from two places

- the domain, textfiles.org is an incredibly well known domain, so things from there are likely to be interesting and not linkbait

- clicking the link and reading the article, this is guaranteed to answer your question

rconti2• 11 years ago

- the domain, textfiles.org, is for sale. To purchase, call BuyDomains.com.

- clicking the link and reading the article did not help, so I went to the comments for context.

I got lucky on this one. I've never heard of textfiles, so I was going to question whether or not it's really "well-known", and I got a good laugh when I went to the site you recommended and found a domain for sale :)

Axsuul• 11 years ago

Some context: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683

clone1018• 11 years ago

Jason Scott is really one of the heros of our time. His dedication to preserving history is seriously amazing. I really hope to meet him one day.

bootload• 11 years ago

you can get a view of what's going on by looking through the images at https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/sets/721576572772417... there's also microfiche.

nitrogen• 11 years ago

If this weren't happening so far away, I'd be there to help. Historical preservation, especially of niche documents like electronics manuals, will become increasingly important over time as historical equipment needs to be maintained, patents need to be refuted with prior art, etc.

peterwwillis• 11 years ago

Oh wow, I thought this was in SF, and then I realized one of the guys in the picture is Maze, a guy who helps run a hackerspace here in Baltimore. I had no idea this was happening! And not only do I have to work, I injured my neck and back, so I can't lift anything. And no car. Crap. I hope more local people find out about this, though!

voltagex_• 11 years ago

If you know people in the area, can't you make a few calls to see if anyone else can help?

akuchling• 11 years ago

FYI: if you can get there, you might be able to help by assembling the bankers' boxes, which doesn't require too much lifting or bending. (I was there yesterday for a few hours: some people assemble the boxes, others take the boxes and fill them, and then we stack them.)

McKayDavis• 11 years ago

It's sad to see a company go out of business, but I applaud the owners of Manuals Plus [1] for making such a large donation to the Internet Archive.

To provide some more context about what the actual contents of the archive includes, a description is on their about page [2]:

"Manuals Plus buys and sells Electronic Test & Measurement Equipment Manuals. We stock over 400,000 manuals at our Westminster, Maryland location. Our inventory consists of Operator, Service, Calibration, and Programming manuals."

[1] http://www.manualsplus.com/

[2] http://www.manualsplus.com/About.php

ersii• 11 years ago

The fate of the manuals are not known to be heading to the Internet Archive just yet. It's quite likely they'll end up there though. At least for digitalizing and scanning them in.

I however join you in applauding Manuals Plus in letting these go. It must be hard for them.

userbinator2• 11 years ago

We stock over 400,000 manuals

The original estimate[1] was only(!) 25k, so that explains the need to order more boxes.

[1] http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683

Someone• 11 years ago

Part of the difference could be number of manuals versus number of different manuals. The original blog post talked about there being multiple cookies of some manuals.

Part of it could also be ronding up for advertising a number they do not know exactly. A firm like this may not have kept perfect tally of their stock ("hey guys! It's January again. The guy from accounting needs to know what we have. It's counting time!")

pmorici• 11 years ago

The way I understand it, the company behind the manualsplus.com service (Ridge Equipment Company, Inc.) isn't going out of business. The issue is they needed to move to a new location and it didn't make economic sense for them to continue with the manuals part of their business when considering the cost of outfitting the new facility for their storage and moving the material.

xur17• 11 years ago

If that's the case, they should be getting a nice tax deduction for the donation, right?

Animats• 11 years ago

He's getting great service from Uline, the packaging material supplier. 4-hour delivery on pallet loads of boxes.

erode• 11 years ago

Well that's because he paid $4,000 for it.

textfiles2• 11 years ago

I paid $560 for the courier service Uline provided. The rest was the cost of the 1,200 boxes, regardless of shipping method (Roughly $3,400)

ak217• 11 years ago

Jason Scott is doing an incredible public service here. Presuming this gets scanned and released to the public, it will over time result in many pieces of recycled electronics, inspired engineers, and derivative art.

leni536• 11 years ago

Presuming this gets scanned and released to the public

What is the copyright status of these manuals? I hope they don't bump into any legal problem though and they can release scans.

userbinator2• 11 years ago

Some of the oldest ones are probably in the public domain, but I guess the others are still copyrighted; nevertheless, I trust the Internet Archive will have that figured out as they have collected plenty of other copyrighted material before this.

300bps• 11 years ago

The Internet Archive hosts all of the MAME ROMs, many of which are still copyrighted:

https://archive.org/details/MAME_0_161_ROMs

fluffyllemon• 11 years ago

For context:

This is the third post in a series. The author (Jason Scott) is trying to save ~25,000 manuals, instruction booklets, and engineering notes (largely electronics related, created over the last 80 years). This is a large project, the company which owns the manuals currently is going out of business, and all the manuals will be thrown away very soon (re: tomorrow).

First post: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4711 Second post: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683

lectrick• 11 years ago

It is infeasible (IMHO) to deal with all physical manuals ever in this way, unless you are literally a Manuals Library that is supported by the county or whatever.

I think the only way to go forward is to digitize the shit out of everything.

jayzalowitz• 11 years ago

Jason, You continue to make me feel awesome about humanity. Say hello to socks for me.

kriro• 11 years ago

What an amazing effort. In case someone local wants to join in:

The warehouse is located in Finksburg, MD, about 30 miles northwest of Baltimore.

[taken from the original post of the issue: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683]

madmaze• 11 years ago

I and many others spent basically all day there yesterday. It's fun to look through all of these manuals. It takes a lot of concentration picking out the unique copies and leaving the many copies behind. Especially HP.. arg so, so many revisions of the same manual.

niklasni1• 11 years ago

Thank you for your effort.

yitchelle• 11 years ago

Thinking outside the box here, would it not be more effective contacting some of the companies still operating (eg, HP, Intel, Philips etc) to see if they have some of the operating manuals already scanned, and available publicly?

WalterBright3• 11 years ago

You're right that it is not worth bothering with the manuals already online and available. But clearly they are so short of time they cannot spare the time to do such searches, and can only just grab them all.

jwarren• 11 years ago

Those are not the original physical artefacts though. Digitisation is immensely important for access of content, but it's not preservation.

WalterBright3• 11 years ago

I wish I could be there to help. But I can't, so I made another donation.

Jason and the other volunteers, my thanks! You guys are heroes.

WalterBright3• 11 years ago

I've never heard of this company before now. I've needed a manual for my Leader LBO-514A oscilloscope, and it turns out they have one. I guess Jason has it now!

bitJericho• 11 years ago

I needed a manual for a piece of consumer electronics but they didn't have the manual. The manufacturer did though when I contacted them. I thought about giving the copy to this company but I felt no desire to help some business out like that, but for the IA, heck yeah, I might have to send it off to them.

ProntoJr• 11 years ago

wow, just wow. huge work indeed

Navarr• 11 years ago

Wait Columbus? That's not drastically far..

eddyb• 11 years ago

Let the future remember the past clearer than we ever could.

ommunist2• 11 years ago

I think, we all should tip to buy a vacuum book scanner for Mr Scott, if he shall decide to digitize manuals. You won't believe how useful this library will be for the folks in the field.

throwaway77672• 11 years ago

It would probably be better to donate such a thing to the Internet Archive and get to use it for this project. This guy is renting storage space for the manuals out of his own pocket, it's unlikely he has space for industrial scanning equipment at home.

enf• 11 years ago

Jason Scott works for the Internet Archive, as well as doing his own archiving and documentary work.

teraflop• 11 years ago

From a previous post: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4695

Hey, go ask Google. I think people don’t understand what Google is and how much it particularly cares about doing “The Right Thing” (not much), and the next person to mention the Linear Book Scanner (a prototype that destroys books), well, they’re going to get a hug and my distracting words of love.

We are barely halfway done

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