Wayne Stahnke notes that ordinary 35mm lenses and film can resolve 100
lines/mm.  The image of a music box disk within the standard 24 x 36 mm
frame would have 2400 lines across the diameter, or 1200 lines across
the radius.  I will assume that the central 20% of the radius is blank,
therefore 240 lines are blank, leaving 960 lines.  If there are 200
channels playing, this results in not quite 5 lines per channel, which
is inadequate resolution.  High-resolution film and optics, and bigger
film for larger images (e.g., 6 x 6 cm) seem to be needed.  I doubt
very much that the image from Kodak Photo-CD would be usable.

Terry Smythe's idea of microfilm (16mm) camera recording was tested on
an Ampico roll, with promising results for making photographic archive
records.  I believe Richard Tonnesen reported this experiment at a
recent AMICA convention.

I originally asked Jack Kane to put a small disc in a photocopying
machine and "duplicate" it, but upon further reflection (!) I fear the
reflections from the metal disk would be terrible!  I like Wayne's idea
of back-lighting the disk for photography.

I believe that large flat-bed scanners with a CCD array of 4096 pixels
are now available at some service shops.  Certainly an optical
photocopy machine could reduce a photo print image to fit the flat-bed
scanner.

Jim Heyworth correctly notes that the motion of the star-wheel in the
music box adds a time delay in inverse porportion to the radius.
Correcting for this delay should be an option available in the image
conversion program:  if the music is to be edited and played via Midi
then the delay must be corrected, but if the data is to operate a
punching machine there should be no further correction.

Terry Smythe: Your 28-inch Kalliope seems like a representative "big"
instrument.  What is the channel spacing at the star-wheels?  What is
the normal rotational speed (seconds per revolution)?

Larry Smith: could you kindly contact Porter Music Box Company and ask
their thoughts on these topics?  I wonder if Rouge is working on this
problem...

• ----------------------------------
|         Robbie Rhodes            |
| Return-Path: rrhodes@foxtail.com |
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