Part of the huge amount of digital data generated these days has to be archived for decades due to legal reasons or has to be preserved for centuries and for future generations. Because the readability and lifetime of electronic storage media is rather limited, electronic digital storage systems have to be reformatted or copied on new media every five to ten years. In clear contrast, microfilm has a life expectancy of several hundred years and its content remains human readable. While data recording on b&w microfilm has been widely established for long-term archiving, recording on color microfilm has been fairly limited in the past mainly due to the lack of productive and easy-to-use equipment resulting in prohibitive cost levels.An RGB laser COM system - called Eternity - has been developed by Pro Archive to provide users a unique tool for highresolution and high-speed recording of image data on color microfilm. The Eternity recorder is based on red, green and blue lasers at its core. These lasers produce color images onto either 35 mm or 105 mm wide color microfilm. The Eternity uses an internal drum configuration where the focused laser beam hits the film material in normal incidence all over the exposure area. This ensures high resolution and consistent color quality without the compromising effects of classical camera- and display-based photographic exposure systems. Thanks to a recording density of 7,580 dpi one single color microfiche offers a storage capacity of up to 3.65 GB of digital image data or of about 100 original A4 color pages scanned at 300 dpi. A 60 m microfilm cassette enables recording of 400 microfiches without reload, hence providing autonomous recording of about 40,000 A4 color pages within 48 hours of operation.The Eternity laser recorder enables long-term retention of image data on color microfilm that outperforms existing methods with respect to safety, longevity and total cost of ownership.
Daniel Fluck, "RGB laser COM system for recording digital image data on color microfilm offers new perspectives for long-term archiving" in Proc. IS&T Archiving 2008, 2008, pp 216 - 220, https://doi.org/10.2352/issn.2168-3204.2008.5.1.art00044