By Emily Beliveau, Digital Projects Assistant
16,274,377,342,285.
Sixteen trillion, two hundred seventy-four billion, three hundred seventy-seven million,
three hundred forty-two thousand, two hundred eighty-five.
50px x 15px at 1600%, detail from image no. A992.0003.545
That is the number of pixels that make up the full-sized cropped versions of the digital images we created for the Henderson Digitization Project. The number gets even bigger when you include the pixels that make up the border around the original and a ruler for scale that we included in our master copies. Why we made different kinds of copies while we were scanning is the subject of a future post. For now, what do all those pixels represent in physical space?
The majority of the 867 digital images we created were produced from film negatives. We only scanned print photographs in the few cases where there wasn’t a corresponding negative. In addition, we scanned about two dozen pieces of correspondence related to the images, mostly containing details about photo orders back and forth between photographer J. Gordon Henderson and his clients.
All together, we scanned 22.7 square metres or 35,235 square inches of archival material. Compared to some of the huge digitization projects taking place these days, ours is a modest effort, but it is an important effort nonetheless. Launching our first public digitization project and getting these images online marks the beginning of a new era of digital participation for the Huron County Museum & Historic Gaol.