What is an aperture card?
An aperture card is a punched card with a chip of microfilm. They are usually 35mm in height. These cards are commonly used for making many copies of documents cheaply, which makes for easy distribution. An aperture card punched by machine-readable data usually associated with microfilm images and then printed on top of the card for identification. Aperture cards are an inexpensive way of securely storing data. These types of cards are usually used for archiving.
What is an aperture card scanner?
Obviously an aperture card scanner reads or scans the aperture card. Aperture card scanner machines are used to converted the film into readable images. These days they are commonly used to convert old aperture card data into digital files.
Why use aperture cards?
Aperture cards are widely used by the defense department and other organizations as they have a 100yr life span. Which means that often the file or subject matter will become outdated (or that is the theory) before it becomes unusable.
What are the disadvantages of using aperture cards?
The main disadvantage of aperture cards is the files are analogue, making them less search-able and less readable as digital files. Being physical cards means that it takes time to load them into the aperture card scanner, so processing the image data contained on the cards is time consuming and more labor intense. There has also been situations where the aperture cards have not been stored correctly and this has resulted in fading or damage to the aperture cards.
Requiring more effort than a digital file and needing the use of an aperture card scanner, aperture cards becoming less desirable as better more efficient technologies take hold.
Is an aperture card storage solution worth considering?
Overall the aperture card and aperture card scanner can be a great asset to some business’s with large files and those needing the long term archive of image data. The initial outlay is reasonable considering the longevity of the files is outstanding. When considering buying an aperture card and aperture card scanner you will need to think about being prepared for careful storage.