MITS II (Microfiche Image Transmission System) Investigations and Design Alternatives

摘要

A design study was conducted to investigate optional methods for the design and fabrication of a production version of the Microfiche Image Transmission System (MITS II). This second-generation facsimile is intended for high volume electronic transmission of microfiche personnel records from the Naval Military Personnel Command to major Navy facilities around the world. Major tasks in this design study include: evaluation of alternative design approaches for improving the performance and reliability of the prototype MITS configuration (MITS I); identification of commercially available components, systems, or related technologies which potentially satisfy MITS II functional requirements; and preparation of a System Design Description which documents the results. Significant findings of this study include: a new concept for a whole fiche scanner which requires a minimum on complexity in the film transport; a minicomputer/microcomputer architecture for control and processing of image data and record request activity respectively; incorporation of a high performance microfiche stack loader and bar code label identification; a customized satellite telecommunications interface to optimize data transmission performance; a commercially available laser computer output microfilm (COM) recorder which uses dry-processed silver halide film; a recommendation to not implement multi-grey level scanning or recording for reasons of system throughput and hardware availability; and selection of PASCAL as the most appropriate high order language for all custom system software.