Goofy question about "industrial" archiving

Subject: Goofy question about "industrial" archiving From: "Billy Pettit" <Billy.Pettit at wdc.com> Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:37:19 -0700 To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Chris M wrote: Just curious how, or even if, old design drawings and such were preserved in the old days. I could barely venture a guess as to when the first optical recording drives became "useful", all I remember is a friend obtaining one of the first (locally) cd players for his auto in ~the summer of '87. I was in contact with a few of the people who were involved w/the Mindset computer, and had hoped I would obtain info on the custom vlsi chips it used, in any form of course. This just lead me to ponder when this stuff started *appearing* on cd's and such. Can anyone name the different optical CD formats that modern readers can't work with? I know there must be a few... ------------- Billy answers: There are two parts to your question. The first is how old design drawings were preserved. In all the companies I have worked for in the last 45 years, the drawings were destroyed. Some individual copies survived. And patent applications remain. But all design drawings were destroyed as a matter of policy. That way there was no way support obligation coming up long after it was cost effective. And it makes patent challenges difficult, especially prior art arguments. Even today, most of the design archives where I work have a very limited life time.