Originally Posted by
Drew Wiley
Bob, you obviously know your stuff; but so do I. I have some components from the same outfit that did Durst's custom aerial neg enlargers, and have even seen
the guts for the custom colorheads. We're talking early 90's technology here, not 60's, actually the last of the true industrial Durst production, never for sale to the public. The NSA bought them and installed them in a facility where ZERO digital technology was allowed. They wanted a double-blind system that couldn't be fraudulently manipulated. The other advantage was the intuitive ability to assess real aerial film images, versus specialized analysts. In other words, rapid assessments can be made with big true-color enlargements, like a spotting scope, and then afterwards specific details can be homed in on via satellite or drone imaging. Astronomers have an analogous problem. They rely on smaller scopes used by amateurs to first discover a comet or asteroid, and then tell the big observatory pros where to look with the fancy gear. Of course, decisions are ultimately made by politicians and other big egos who might or might not respect
the facts, but that doesn't discount the technological advantages themselves. I have no idea if these units are still in use. If they are, nobody is supposed to know about them anyway. I do simply because of my own analogous design needs, asking around.
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