I mean, the bar to go get a reference book to look something up is significantly higher than “pull my smartphone out of my pocket and tap a few things in”.
Here’s an article from 1945 on what the future of information access might look like.
Eighty years ago, the stuff that was science fiction to the people working on the cutting edge of technology looks pretty unremarkable, even absurdly conservative, to us in 2025:
Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving.
Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.
Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials.
If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.
A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.
Amusingly, in a way, we are using microphotography (photolithography) to produce images on the scale of hundreds of atoms. Then we stack those images to achieve dense structures of data that can be read out electronically (flash chips).
Making a rom chip using this technology would be a lot like that encyclopedia britannica in a matchbox, except more around the size of a grain of dust. Of course we tend to make ram instead, where information is only encoded after the photolithography is done creating the structure.
I’d highly recommend going down to your local library and seeing if they have any microfilm copies of the local paper. It’s kinda fun just scrolling through the years and seeing what people felt was important enough to put to print. A lot of smaller towns used to publish interpersonal gossip. (The Harringtons of 5th Avenue entertained a Mr. Somensuch last Wednesday night.)
I mean, the bar to go get a reference book to look something up is significantly higher than “pull my smartphone out of my pocket and tap a few things in”.
Here’s an article from 1945 on what the future of information access might look like.
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm
Eighty years ago, the stuff that was science fiction to the people working on the cutting edge of technology looks pretty unremarkable, even absurdly conservative, to us in 2025:
Amusingly, in a way, we are using microphotography (photolithography) to produce images on the scale of hundreds of atoms. Then we stack those images to achieve dense structures of data that can be read out electronically (flash chips).
Making a rom chip using this technology would be a lot like that encyclopedia britannica in a matchbox, except more around the size of a grain of dust. Of course we tend to make ram instead, where information is only encoded after the photolithography is done creating the structure.
I’d highly recommend going down to your local library and seeing if they have any microfilm copies of the local paper. It’s kinda fun just scrolling through the years and seeing what people felt was important enough to put to print. A lot of smaller towns used to publish interpersonal gossip. (The Harringtons of 5th Avenue entertained a Mr. Somensuch last Wednesday night.)
They still do. Birthdays and funerals are also fodder for small town print papers.
That’s a neat find!