IMAGES - IMAGES - IMAGES

We are all aware that we live in an age of information technology and that pictorial images form a large part of that new technology. Photography todays means colour prints-about 45 billion colour prints every year world-wide, in the UK the figure is about six million pictures every day. But this is small compared with the number of frames taken on motion picture film and we can double the number if we include the frames taken with electronic video cameras. The number of pictures amateurs take each day is tiny compared to the number of photo-copies made each day. It is also small compared to the number of microfilm images that are taken. In fact the number of images made every day is mind boggling! This paper is an outline of the history of information imaging on film, it considers the way in which electronics, and especially computers, are providing additional facilities in the quest for higher quality images and it concludes by looking at some of the complex systems now available to capture, store, manipulate and reproduce image electronically.