From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 22:10:55 -0800 (PST)
To: Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: ITAR and Paper ROM
Message-ID: <199702060610.WAA14375@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 09:26 AM 2/5/97 -0800, Steve Schear wrote:
>>Given that high-density inkjet printers can do 600x600 dpi resolution, it
>>should be possible to achieve the equivalent of 100x100 bpi of
>>easily-recoverable data on ordinary paper.  That's about 800 kilobits, or
>>100 kilobytes.   What does ITAR say about this?
>
>I'm not sure if what I did in the 80s, trying to create what I called
>'paper ROM, is applicable.  In these investigations I used matricies of
>small (1-3 mm) squares of gray (16 levels) or color (64 levels) with a mind
>to replace diskettes for inexpensive mass data distribution.  I was able to
>reliably get 100-200 KB/page side using standard offset printing.  With
>modern ink-jet/laser printers you should be able to reliably get at least
>10-50KB/page side. Although a technical success, I abandoned the effort
>when I discovered someone had patented (4,488,679) something similar a few
>years earlier.

It seems to me that the main impediment to doing this in the middle 1980's 
was the lack of inexpensive scanners.  But the utility of a system like this 
has, unfortunately (?) or perhaps fortunately, probably been killed by the 
Internet.  Today, a magazine or newspaper can merely post a short pointer to 
a website including an FTP, or something similar.  True, that doesn't 
guarantee the availability of the data years later, but...



Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com