ITAR and Paper ROM
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?
Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com
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. -- Steve
At 09:26 AM 2/5/97 -0800, Steve Schear wrote:
I'm not sure if what I did in the 80s, trying to create what I called 'paper ROM, is applicable. [....] to replace diskettes for inexpensive mass data distribution. Although a technical success, I abandoned the effort when I discovered someone had patented (4,488,679) something similar a few years earlier.
Yeah, our patent office is so helpful - granting a patent for "Storage of Information By Making Marks On Paper" :-) You'd think they'd recognize a few thousand years of prior art..... Xerox also has a similar patent; their method uses little diagonals to encode data in. ///\\\/// It really _isn't_ called "cuneform". More practically, sort of, there was the Cauzin Softstrip Reader, which cost about $200 and held enough data to distribute programs back when computers and programs were much smaller; a few PC magazines tried distributing programs by printing them in the back that way. Cute, but not cute enough to stick around very long. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)
participants (2)
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Bill Stewart -
Steve Schear