Digital preservation of a highway photolog film archive in Connecticut.
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2014-01-28
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Abstract:The Connecticut Department of Transportation has been photologging their transportation network
for over forty years. Photologging at a minimum refers to the use of an instrumented vehicle, which is
designed to capture successive photographs of the roadway at defined intervals. Connecticut is not unique
when it comes to photologging and historical imagery. According to the 1982 National Cooperative Highway
Research Program Synthesis of Highway Practice Number 94 on Photologging, “at least 41 states, 29 cities, 6
counties, the U.S. Park Service, and the U.S. Forest Service have used photolog,” which at the time was nearly
all film-based. At the time of the 1982 report, “more than 500,000 miles” had been collected. Film continued
to be used throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s. In Connecticut this 35mm film archive consists of
approximately 11.5 million frames of photologged roadway and railway images, which were collected during
the years preceding digital storage (1973–1996) and computer distribution at ConnDOT’s research facility in
Rocky Hill, CT.
The overall objective for this study was to produce high quality digital images from the historical 35-
mm film that are easily accessible to potential users at ConnDOT, UConn and any other Digital HIWAY user.
This report documents the film transfer process and develops a film transfer workflow that may benefit other
states as they begin to preserve and provide more access to their historical footage. Furthermore, upgrades
were made to the image viewing software DigitalHIWAY and a stereo camera mount was developed to
successfully capture 3D roadway imagery.
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