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World Radio History
Site Technology: Scanners, computers & software.
Preparing each document
for publication on worldradiohistory.com
is a process involving 
a detailed series of steps.
using the most
advanced hardware
and software available.
  • Computer hardware
  • Scanning to JPG files
  • Processing bitmap scans
  • Optical Character Recognition
  • Conversion to compressed PDF for the Internet
  • User Contributions of publications
  • How to send your own scans
Our
Equipment
2024 Update


We have four computers doing processing, book scanning, sheet-fed scanning and wide document scanning, plus four independent NAS storage devices..


The most advanced computer is the site design and scan processing unit. It employs an Gigabyte Aorus Motherboard with a Ryzen Threadripper 7960 processor,


Memory is 124 gb of Kingston DDR5 6400, and it has a Gigabyte Radeon 7900 video card video Card, Gigabyte Aorus Waterforce Liquid Cooler, an Gigabyte 1300 watt power supply, a trio of redundant Seagate Firecuda PCIE Gen 5 m.2 SSD boot drive.


This computer has an internal OWC Accelsior RAID array of 8 Crucial T700 2tb PCIe Gen5 SSDs for most site work. A second RAID card holds 8 4tb SSDs for daily backup. There are also 4 x Seagate Exos 20tb internal backup drives for weekly fill system backups.


Four Synology NAS systems with over 80tb of storage are used for additional backup and storage of all raw bitmap scans..


. Monitors are Asus ProArt 32" 3840 x 2160 displays on the work computer and Dell UP301730" monitors on the scanning computers.
 

The main computer case is a Lian Li Dynamic EVO XL tower.
 

We use customized WASD Mechanical keyboards and Corsair vertical mouses on all units.


Additional hard drive backups are maintained offline in separate secure locations.


Each of the three main scanners has its own computer set up for the best performance for that specific scanner. We have 3 scanners for sheet feeding, wide documents and open-book scanning.


At present, all three scanners are attached to individual computers using Corsair iCue cases, power supplies and liquid coolers with AMD Ryzen 9 CPUs and 64tb of Corsair memory.


We use customized WASD mechanical keyboards and Corsair vertical gaming mouses on all systems.
 

Clicking on many of the items will bring up that product's description page.


 Clicking on most images will  link to a full description. 


  • Gigabyte Aorus TRX50 Aero Motherboard
    124gb of Kingston Fury
    DDR5 6400 Memory

    OWC Accelsior RAID NVMe boards with 16tb as work disk and another with 32tb for daily backups.       		  
    4 Seagate Exos 20 tb drives
     for weekly backup in system.



    Gigabyte Aorus Waterforce Liquid CPU Cooler
    Gigabyte 1300 Watt Power Supply
     
    Seagate Firecuda boot drive
    with 2 parallel backups    		  
    Gigabyte Radeon 7900 Video Card

    Lian Li Dynamic EVO XLCase
    Ryzen 7960 24 core CPU

    Synology NAS with
     5 x 8tb drives

    Synology NAS #2
    with 5 x 12tb drives
    Each Scanner has its own Computer 
     
    Corsair iCue Cases    		  
    Corsair iCue H100i Liquid Cooler

    AMD Ryzen 9 2900X CPUs 
    Corsair RMX Power Supplies 
Hosting

We have a dedicated 8 tb server with dual CPUs at one of HiVelocitiy's "server farms" centrally located in Dallas, TX.

At that location we have a redundant RAID array that has given us 99.999% up time over the last five years.

Scanning Decisions

The first step in putting a document on the site is scanning. Depending on the publication, a sheet fed scanner may be employed,. For non-destructive scanning the camera based  library scanner or a large format flatbed can be used.

Click for Details
Kodak i4250
Document Scanner		 Bookeye 5 V3
Open Book Scanner		 Centex IQ Quattro X for wide documents.
Sheet-Fed
Scanner

When we scan documents that do not have to be returned "intact" to their owner, the preferred method employs a sheet-feed high resolution scanner. We use the Kodak i4250 which can do a 1000 page document in less than 10 minutes. The resultant scans are the best of all the possible alternatives. The downside is that publications have to be separated into single pages.



The scanner is "duplex" meaning it takes a picture of both sides of a document in a single pass: it accommodates pages up to 12" by as long as 150".








Tethered Flatbed Scanner

 The Kodak sheet scanner is attached to a Kodak flatbed which runs automatically when no document is on the sheet feeder. This allows for mixed sheet fed documents and fragile pages or thin items to be scanned with the same settings.		  

Scanning Adjustments

The scanner features considerable flexibility in document handling and scanning. here is a view of one of the setup menus that allows customization by document type, size and resolution.

Adjustments to contrast, brightness and document type can be made. The scanner is "smart" and reads graphics differently from text to get crisp letters and sharper pictures.

It also does hole removal, de- skewing, blank page removal and has ultrasonic detection when more than one page at a time is fed to the LED scanning array. 		 
Binding Removal

Preparing publications for sheet feeding. The spine or binding must be removed using an industrial paper cutter.

We use an electric paper cutter to accurately trim bindings and frayed edges.

Note: when items are on loan, this procedure is not used. See the Bookeye scanner below for the non-destructive process used in such cases.
Loaned Documents:
Non-destructive scans.

Documents which can not be stripped at the binding for single page scanning can be scanned with no damage, wear or stress using the Bookeye 5 V3 Overhead Book Scanner..

It takes a digital photograph of two pages at a time and adjusts for curvature and shape distortion.
Click for additional data.		  
Software Enhancement

Proprietary specialized software is used to enhance the scans. Here is another view of the book scanner showing the screen which allows for a range of adjustments to the final scan.

We buy our scanners from
. 
They are knowledgeable, fair and truly nice people!		  

Large Document Scanner

Schematics and large "fold out" pages are now scanned on a Contex IQ Quattro X 3650 36" large format scanner.

These are scanners used by architects, engineers and system designers and can scan big fold-out diagrams in equipment manuals and poster-size inserts in magazines.

Click picture for scanner's website.		  

Flatbed Scanner

Big projects of very large or very delicate documents are scanned on a  DS 5000 12" x 19" flatbed scanner from Epson. While this is the slowest method by far, with a 100 page document taking upwards of an hour, it is the best way to capture brittle old publications or oversized documents. Click picture for Epson website specifications and pricing.

  
Flatbed Software

With the flatbed scanner, we employ the Professional version of VueScan, the absolute best scanner software for both the average consumer and the professional. It's available at a reasonable price in two versions at
http://www.hamrick.com/

The consumer version is only $39.95 and is much better than anything that comes bundled with lower-cost scanners.
  
BookDrive Editor

Whether a page is scanned on the sheet fed Panasonic, the Bookeye or one of several flatbed scanners, the JPG originals are processed in BookDriveEditor.
Here things like contrast, brightness and color gamut can be adjusted. Background removal is possible, as is de-skewing, resizing and sharpening. It's possible to take poor and discolored originals and make them very legible and useful with this application. 		 
Foxit PDF Compressor Pro 8.0

Once documents have been optimized in BookDrive Editor, they are processed in Foxit PDFCompressor Professional (Formerly CVision PDF Compressor) , where huge jpg files are converted to manageable PDFs for Internet viewing.

At the same time, the documents are processed for Optical Character Recognition so that they can be searched.


Click the graphic to see the PDF Compressor home page.
Indexing for Search

Publications that are part of large collections, like Broadcasting Magazine, are globally indexed so that the entire collection can be searched.

We use Zoom Search Engine from Australia's PassMark. It creates highly configurable search databases that are callable via css functions. 

Click the graphic and you can visit the Zoom Search website.  		 
Why do all this?
This site is your webmaster's homage to the radio industry. It serves a practical purpose of demonstrating my commitment to my profession and my consulting clients naturally appreciate that and gain an understanding of my knowledge of the radio industry. That aspect of my career makes this site totally free and open.
A wonderful side benefit lies in being able to pass something forward after 62 years in a sometimes frightening but always exciting field of endeavor: radio.
Contributions

We welcome site user contributions.
If you wish to simply give items, email us! If you wish to loan documents which are to be returned, we can provide shipping via UPS or USPS both ways.
 If you have scanned documents yourself or want to do so, contact us for our preferred file  formatting information and access to our DropBox account.