Songs on blue ambersol cylinders.
Edison Cylinder Phonograph -- 1918 with 60 cylinders.
Mary Beth from St Croix Falls Historical Society scanning 100 3x4 1948 negatives of the St Croix Falls Highschool on the OML negative scanner. They turned out great even though the negatives were somewhat damaged.
Above: Kristin scanning the Scrapbooks.
April 2025: We are digitizing 3 old scrapbooks from the Laketown Lutheran Church, preserving abou 700 pages in digital form as well as helping them make two printed self-published books from the scans. They cover the history from the 1870s to now. The project is being done by volunteers taking each page from the 3-ring binder and scanning both sides.
An ongoing project at the Obsolete Media Laboratory is to digitize about 2000 items from the Polk County Museum. Audio tape reels, cassettes, boxes of slides, VHS tapes, movies etc. The project will last through 2024.
October 5th, 6 pm at the Polk County WI museum in Balsam Lake, Russ Hanson of the OML will give a short presentation on the County Museum digitization project. The project moves along, but could use a volunteer or two to help feed the media into the digitization equipment. An easy job, but, for example, with an hour tape it takes an hour to digitize.
The presentation is online at PCHS Digitization Project
Brenna Weston behind many boxes of old media from the County Museum to digitize at Cushing,
One of the areas at the Cushing Museum is the Obsolete Media Laboratory. The goal is to be able to digitize old media -- film, video, photos, documents, audio, etc.
The current inventory of media players at the Museum:
An inventory of digitizing and viewing devices in the OML. We started collecting devices 8 years ago, but the majority has come in since we officially kicked off the Obsolete Media Lab in January 2022. We have spent about $3000 on equipment, almost all of it from grants. However, much of the equipment is donated or bought used and repaired. We estimate our lab holds over $10,000 of equipment had we bought it new when it was new! Now much is just wasting space in people's closets. Some items are actually still valuable as is a $300 Grundig tape recorder bought in 1965 now listed for $475 on e-Bay today.
In no particular order:
Scanners:
Epson V800 flatbed scanner. High resolution with the ability to scan negatives up to 8x10 inches, slides and regular scanning. Paid for by a WHS mini-grant and shared to 6 other museums in the past several years. About $850
Fujitsu S1300i rapid two-sided scanner. It allows scanning double-sided in one pass of a stack of up to a dozen sheets of paper (up to 8.5x14) at 600DPI. Also can stack 5 photos or postcards at a time and run them through. Bought used on e-Bay for $60. These were meant for business office rapid scans of papers or business cards etc. and are old technology but excellent as they cost about 1/10 of a new one and are supported on modern computers. Buy a used one!
HP Scanjet 63010 flat bed scanner. Donated to us and useful.
Ion 35mm film and slide scanner -- stand-alone for the fast scan of slides. Not really good for high-resolution scans, but great for a quick web-resolution scan. $5 at a Thrift Store.
CZUR 16+ camera on a stand for rapid scanning or copying of newspapers, books, record books etc. Funded with WHS mini-grant -- $299 refurbished. It does 300 dpi suitable for OCR documents and scans as fast as you can turn the pages and press the foot pedal to take the photo.
All-in-one scanner/printers
Epson Workforce 7620 All-in-one. Batch scan a stack of 25 pages double-sided. Flat scan up to 11x17. Print 13x19 or up to 13x42 banner. Double sided printing. Used for scanning and poster prints. Free as it was broken and we got it repaired.
Epson WF3640 All in one. Like the one above except regular and legal size paper only. Donated free as the ink heads were clogged. We unclogged them and use it for printing and scanning.
HP laserjet 1100 printer - one sided black and white printing. Works on XP computer only. Donated with cartridges. We really need to upgrade to a double sided laser printer.
Audio Tape (these plug directly into the microphone port on a computer)
Panasonic cassette tape recorder/player. Donated
TEAC X300R Tape recorder/player. Reel to reel tapes. Donated
Grundig TKZ4 reel to reel tape player - donated
Boombox with CD and tape player -donated
GE mini-cassette recorder/player $5 thrift store
Using the free Audacity software we can digitize directly with a earphone to microphone cable available from Amazon $5
Movie/Film devices.
We can project the movie films onto a screen in a darkened room and point a camera to the screen and record it digitally that way-- that work OK and is free. However a frame-by-frame digitization would be better. There can be difficulty and expense buying projector bulbs, so we accept multiple projector donations as a way of getting extra bulbs.
2 Bell and Howell Auto Load 8mmuper 8mm projectors Donated
Bell and Howell 8mm movie projector 8mm (old model) Donated
2-16 mm movie projectors donated from local schools
Wolverine 8mm/super 8mm frame-by-frame digitizer. Bought used and "as is" on e-Bay for $70 add repaired at the museum. This is nice but somewhat fussy to run. They cost about $400 new and do a very good digitzation.
2-slide projectors and extra carousels. Donated
1 Nikon L810 digital camera -- $50 used on e-Bay
1 Samsung DVD VHS player - donated. We bought a $20 device that connects the output of the player (or video cameras) directly to a PC USB port to digitize videos. Plays VHS tapes to the computer.
3 various 8 mm format video cameras for playback of most 8 mm analog and digital camcorder recordings. Sony Handi cam and Canon. Donated
Complete photo darkroom setup but no place to use nor need to.
Microfilm and 35 mm film viewers
Most of the rural newspapers are on microfilm and not yet digitized so must be viewed at a library or history research center. Local libraries do have microfilms but do not have viewers in our area. So although we can order and check out microfilm from the library, we can't view it nor digitize or print it.
So we have collected the following:
Northwest Microfilm 2020A Viewer kiosk -- donated -- you can take a photo of an image by pointing your camera at the screen, but not wonderful
ST-Imaging Viewscan 200x microfilm viewer and digitizer. $75. With a computer, it makes a digital image of the viewed microfilm page. These are $10,000 pieces of equipment, but we got this one from a defunct college. It is a 2007 model but works fine. Probably the best buy we have made!
Dukane 35 mm filmstrip projector (under repair) used on e-Bay $20
Graflex Studymate II personal filmstrip viewer. $20 e-Bay and repaired
(we have a collection of 60 educational filmstrips donated)
Computers and computer media.
Blue Chip IBM DOS clone from the 1980s to read 5.25 floppy diskettes and 3.5 diskettes. Donated
Windows XP computer to use with old hardware that requires XP or older operating system (one scanner, one printer, and other old devices). Donated
Windows laptop to use with CZUR scanner -- used $200
Windows laptop to use with the Epson V800 scanner - used $200
Windows 10 modern computer for general use $50 used local purchase.
Windows 10 all-in-one to use with microfilm digitizer Donated. Very good computer for video processing and other high power needs.
For use with the computers:
USB Zip drive reader/writer
USB 3.5 inche disketter reader/writer
Internal and USB CD/DVD reader writer
USB multi-camera card reader -- most types
Miscellaneous
Viewmaster viewer and projector
Stereoscope and old stereo view cards.
Magic Lantern projector and slides
DIY camera stand and negative copier with a backlit light source
Record player stereo deck (under repair) donated.
Video Projector
Epson Home Cinema 880 video projector with wifi connection purchased with local grant $800
Infocus IN2102 Video projector donated -- beginning to fail donated
7ft wide pull-down projector screen $90 and small portable screen donated
The Obsolete Media Laboratory is meant to be shared by other historical societies and museums. Some of the equipment may be loaned out (i.e. the negative scanner), but much is best used with help at the Cushing Museum of the Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical Society. Open Mondays 10-2 and by appointment.
Russ Hanson Obsolete Media Laboratory Director
selhscushing@gmail.com
Located in uptown Cushing, WI --up the hill from downtown and on the west side of the road at the peak of the Cushing hill, where settlers gathered in the 1870s to fend off the bogus Indian uprising.
A 1930 35mm positive black and white filmstrip made by the Polk Co Agent gets run through the stand-alone slide/film digitizer. The agent had sewn together several 24 frame films to make a long presentation to use with a filmstrip projector. It was a little scratched from being used many times but some very interesting farm scenes at what looks like an Agricultural day (or many) with talks, demos, machinery etc. The agent from 1928-1930 was Charles F Claflin.
Learning how to prune apple trees
The latest tractor is demonstrated
A potato field
The agricultural day was for the whole family