Floppy Diskography

Recently three researchers sought access to the contents of 3.5-inch floppy disks in three archival collections at Hoover. You might think that responding to these requests is routine, but, after activating the write-protection tab and scanning for viruses, the process can take many turns.

Three disks in the Roger Mansell collection were labeled as containing the unpublished memoir of Robert Bjoring, a prisoner of war in the Philippines during World War II. A number of the files on the three disks had the same file name and were the same size, a common occurrence when files are repeatedly backed up. For each file we always generate a checksum, a digital "fingerprint" that serves as a unique identifier. By comparing the checksums of all the files, we were able to confirm the existence of duplicate copies and eliminate the duplicates, saving time for researchers using the files and conserving space in our storage system.

The papers of A. L. Adamishin, a Soviet and Russian diplomat, contained eleven disks with dates written on the labels. We were able to open ten of them; the last one was corrupted and unreadable. Once we viewed the contents (diaries for 1990 and 1991), we found that they matched up to paper diaries in the collection. Evidently, someone printed out the contents of the disks and placed both the printouts and the disks in the boxes shipped to Hoover. Given the many hundreds--perhaps thousands--of computer media in our archival collections, we decided that the paper printouts were sufficient for research and preservation purposes and ceased work on the digital files.

The thirty-two disks in the David Fowler collection proved to be the most exotic. The curator who acquired the collection was told that the disks contained newswire stories, a rather vague description. The few disks with labels were handwritten in an incomprehensible scrawl. Our standard software could not read the disks and reported that they had not been formatted. We are still hoping to recover at least some data from the disks by using specialized software running in a Linux environment, which requires more staff time. Who knows what we'll find?

After activating the write-protection tab (at the tip of the pencil), files on the disk cannot be altered or deleted.

Is This Bit Rot?

The term "bit rot" gets batted around a lot, but its definition isn't so easy to nail down. ComputerUser's dictionary describes it as "gradual decay of storage media" while the Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing states that it is "a hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if 'nothing has changed.'" Some online technical dictionaries do not include the term. Meanwhile, Wikipedia's bit rot entry is surprisingly short and contains multiple definitions: decay of storage media, decay of data on storage media, and degradation of software programs. (The entry is flagged as needing citations to reliable sources.)

So maybe I'm not alone in wondering what bit rot looks like in a word-processing file. Some of our archival collections, such as the Marshall Green papers and Notgemeinschaft für eine freie Universität records, contain 5.25-inch floppy disks, which often present problems. Today I'm looking at a disk containing files that open on a PC. They suffer from some malady, as indicated by this sample from a letter dated January 21, 1986:

<<<<<>>>>

Thankó verù mucè foò á lovelù luncheoî anä somå splendiä views® Wå 

imaginå yoõ no÷ iî Indiá anä wondeò iæ yoõ arå listeninç tï somå oæ thå 

samå Indianó witè whoí wå talkeä yearó ago® Thå artistó anä economistó 

werå quitå remarkable¬ buô thå politicaì scientistó useä tï talë abouô 

atomiã bombó foò Indiá witè eager¬ burninç eyeó whilå beinç verù carefuì 

noô tï kilì anù insects® (Severaì haä theiò beardó covereä iî whitå 

silk so that no insect would get caught and be stifled there.)

<<<<<>>>>>

The file name, Enid, has no file extension, so it is difficult to determine what software was used to create it. The sample above is from the rendering in MS Word with Windows character encoding, but no matter what software I open the file in, I get some gibberish. But it isn't all gibberish--the last line is completely legible. Sometimes a letter displays correctly, like the "n" in "insect," but not in other cases, like the "n" that should end "luncheoî" in the first line. Is this bit rot?

Regardless of the diagnosis, the next question is what to do. Because we can infer what many of the corrupted characters should be, we can match them to their actual counterpart, as in this sample:

Corrupted version True character

ë k

ì l

í m

î n

ï o

ð p

Then we could use the find-and-replace feature to fix all the corrupted characters. But it is more difficult to infer the correct characters for corrupted numbers. In addition, I assume that matching corrupted to true characters also varies from one file to the next--after all, this decay probably doesn't occur in the same, predictable manner and at a steady rate. Furthermore, we've got to deal with thousands of corrupted files on hundreds of disks. Lastly, if we did restore all the files, how can we ensure that the researchers studying them understand our restoration process and its implications for the authenticity and reliability of the content?

If you have answers to any of the above problems, I think Wikipedia needs you to enhance its bit rot entry.

An example of bit rot. Hoover Institution Archives

A Note On Hoover History

Recently, the Hoover Tower’s exterior was cleaned and thus brought closer to how it looked when it opened in 1941. The interior? Not even close. After all, we don’t have a radio room any more.

Radio room? Yes, the Hoover Tower was built with a radio room in the blueprints. Funnily enough, none of us was aware of this until a few years ago; when we were preparing an exhibit on the Institution’s 90th anniversary, I found a recording that mentioned it was produced in “the radio room of the Hoover Tower.”

Why did we have a radio room? Good question. From the records we’ve been able to search, the room was there, at least in part, because of World War II. It seems the room’s purpose was to listen to and record foreign broadcasts, in concert with the military. Over the years, its purpose began to change, with radio programs being produced in the room, including Wealth of the West, a McLaughlin-Group-like program of the day’s issues. This change prompted Stanford to build a production studio across the street in Memorial Hall. (Fun Archives fact: in the Wealth of the West recording on which the radio room was name-checked, one of the guests mentioned an event at the Commonwealth Club of California.)

Do we still have any of these recordings? Another good question. No, but we have something close.

When the room was spec’d out, the records indicate that the broadcasts were intended to be recorded onto cylinders. This doesn’t quite jive, though, because, by the late 1930s, cylinders were an obsolete format. The tower opened in 1941, and it seems odd they would use a format that can record only five minutes at a time when technology of that era (discs) got up to twenty minutes at a time. In any case, there are no cylinders in our stacks that I’m aware of.

We do, however, have a lot of lacquer discs cut in 1942 of English-language, American-audience-intended shortwave broadcasts from Tokyo, Chungking, Bangkok, and Australia. These discs were cut in San Francisco and accessioned by Hoover in 1958. As it happens, I’m currently working on preserving these discs.

So what happened to the radio room? Yet another good question. I don’t know except that the area in which the room used to be is now the wheelchair entrance to the Tower.

And so the mystery remains.

Original floor plan of the Hoover Tower, including the Radio Room. Hoover Records, Hoover Institution Archives.

A Note on Broadcasting History

Recently, we featured some Crusade for Freedom programs on our YouTube channel. What you don’t know is this effort fits in nicely with my last blog post. You see, the disc both programs came from is a type that would only be transferred due to a research request. When you’re emailed a WorldCat record from a former Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) security director about a Crusade for Freedom program, however, things change.

So why did it take an inquiry by an external party for us to digitize and republish those programs?

Those programs were on a sixteen-inch-diameter vinyl disc. First, vinyl discs of any size are relatively stable because they’re generally a single piece of plastic and, due to a niche market that prefers listening to records instead of CDs and mp3s, turntable equipment is easily obtained. (Myself, I prefer SACDs, but that’s an even smaller niche.) Second, although labels tell us a lot, they don’t tell us everything; thus, this disc had to wait while we worked on less stable recordings. We have some hundred similar sixteen-inch vinyl discs, including speeches by Robert Taft in the America First Committee records and collections sporting great names.

If you’re wondering how these sixteen-inch-diameter discs relate to the LPs audiophiles are likely familiar, they’re directly related.

In the days before magnetic tape (1930s to early 1950s), radio syndication was done using these discs. The producer would cut a lacquer disc of the program, and moldings made from that disc would allow the pressing of vinyl copies. These discs also play at 33.3 revolutions per minute (RPM), which, combined with the sixteen-inch diameter, synchronizes with reels of film.

In 1948, when Columbia developed the LP record, it reused the vinyl material and the 33.3 RPM features. With advances in disc cutting over the decades, it was able to decrease the diameter of the disc down to twelve inches owing to a smaller groove width.

So, no, the 33.3 RPM doesn’t come from 78 = 45+33. The audio world is full of myths. Some are harmless. Some are funny. That’s one of both.

Patriotic Posters on the Silver Screen

Like all the other comic book geeks who could not get tickets to Comic-Con in San Diego, I took consolation in being able to see Captain America: The First Avenger (Dir., Joe Johnston, 2011) in theaters its opening weekend. Although I am sure historians will have some understandable frustrations with certain aspects of the period piece, I hope, like me, they will be thrilled by the reproductions of US World War II-era propaganda posters scattered throughout the film and its closing credits. I may be biased though, as part of my duties at the Hoover Institution Archives includes regular perusal of our Poster Collection.

After seeing Captain America, I realized that the red, white, and blue supersoldier and the propaganda posters contemporary to his creation were collaborating media of the WWII-era. Like the posters, Captain America originally appeared in a paper-based medium, comic books, to encourage support of the war effort. The image on the cover of his first comic book appearance, featuring Cap punching Adolph Hitler in the jaw, could have been used for a propaganda poster. The filmmakers, conscious of these cultural ties and his origins, incorporated Captain America as a poster boy of patriotism into the film’s narrative. Thus featuring the posters throughout the movie and credits not only conveys the era the film is set in but reinforces for the audience the nature of the character and what he stands for.

I have only seen the film once (so far) but recognized a number of posters that we have in our collection (see the accompanying slide show). In fact, Rok!t Studios, the company behind the closing credit sequence, ordered scans of a number of our posters earlier this summer, so we're confident that some of those in the film came from our collection of over 100,000 posters. For information on any of the posters in the slide show, search using their poster ID in our database. For more information on Captain America, consult your local comic shop.

US 1692, Poster collection, Hoover Institution Archives

Operation "Overboard"

Diplomats were not the only ones to fall victim to the pen of an anonymous parodist in the mid-1940s. Military officials were casualties too. A mimeograph identified as draft 5432 and 1/2, found among the William Henry Baumer papers, telegraphs its jest with the national-security classification US Stupid/British Most Stupid.

The document, dated May 32, 1944, lays out the plan for Operation "Overboard." It establishes, in military precision, a series of logical impossibilities designed to prevent any action whatsoever. For starters, it states that "in the interests of security this operation should not be divulged to any person inside Norfolk House and should not be taken outside Norfolk House." Norfolk House, of course, is where the Allied military brass had their offices.

"Overboard" had many objectives, among them to "re-establish the N.A.A.F.I. firmly on the continent of Europe." N.A.A.F.I., the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, operated recreational facilities for the British Armed Forces. Another major object was "to assist the Russians and prevent the situation deteriorating so much that the Russians find themselves in Berlin unprotected by the Allies."

Paralysis cycles recursively through the plan. For example, the cardinal principle for the assault was "that any length of beach is too short to take the number of vehicles belonging to the number of divisions that will be necessary to assault such a length of beach," thus concluding, "Unless immediate steps are taken to construct sufficient beaches in this country which can be towed across the channel already assaulted no assault can take place."

The army, navy and air forces all take hits in the plan, which ultimately determines that the only suitable areas for assault are the Zuyder Zee, Lake Constance, or Holy Island. They meet the criteria of not including a port "to avoid any trouble over port capacities" and not having a hinterland to prevent "any trouble over subsequent deployment."

Annexure 6 to Appendix HHH of the document lists the planning data used, including a list of planners that could almost be sung to the tune "The Twelve Days of Christmas": "1 planner working, 2 planners chatting, 3 planners (2 Naval) arguing,” et cetera. It ends on a note that sounds amazingly modern, but undercuts the fundamental notion of war: "All data is subject to Naval, Military and Air Force advice and no references are made or harm meant to any living thing."

Hoover Wikipedians

The archival community has been slow to embrace Wikipedia, whereas the Hoover Archives staff have been adding information about Hoover's archival collections to Wikipedia for more than two years. Usually a simple entry is made in the "External links" section, which refers readers to the Hoover Archives, such as the following example in Wikipedia's Firing Line entry: "The Firing Line collection (with a program list and RealVideo clips) from the Hoover Institution Archives." We've added a lot of these links, from the entry about Boris Pasternak to one about Chiang Kai-shek so as to connect Wikipedia users to our collections.

Adding such links makes sense. Wikipedia entries rise to the top of the results of most search engine queries, with Wikipedia referring a chunk of traffic to the Hoover website. In addition, college students are frequent users of Wikipedia, according to an article in First Monday, which says that a majority of students always or frequently consult it for course-related research, usually for background information about a topic and to get started with research. The article was based on a study of how college students seek information. To reach out to students, then, there's no better place for the Hoover Archive's presence than this go-to source for those commencing their research.

Excerpt from Wikipedia's Firing Line entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firing_Line)