2.8 PETABYTES!?!?! (Vatican Library being digitized)

WDTPRS ^ | March 7, 2013 | Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

[NYer]

At InfoDocket there is a story describing the project to digitize the Vatican Library.

Get this!

EMC Corporation has today announced that it is providing 2.8 petabytes of storage to help the Vatican Apostolic Library digitize its entire catalogue of historic manuscripts and incunabula (a book or pamphlet printed before 1501). One of the oldest libraries in the world, the Vatican Apostolic Library holds many of the rarest and most valuable documents in existence including the 42 line Latin Bible of Gutenberg, the first book printed with movable type and dating between 1451 and 1455.

Do you remember “Doc’s” reaction to how much electricity was needed to power the DeLorean? We are all used to hearing “giga-” these days. But this is “peta-”

Our hard drives are now in gigabytes and terabytes. I remember when having megabytes was a big deal.

The prefixes indicate multipliers. kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, peta- etc.

Prefix	Symbol(s)	Power of 10	Power of 2
yocto-	y	10-24 *	–
zepto-	z	10-21 *	–
atto-	a	10-18 *	–
femto-	f	10-15 *	–
pico-	p	10-12 *	–
nano-	n	10-9 *	–
micro-	m	10-6 *	–
milli-	m	10-3 *	–
centi-	c	10-2 *	–
deci-	d	10-1 *	–
(none)	–	100	20
deka-	D	101 *	–
hecto-	h	102 *	–
kilo-	k or K **	103	210
mega-	M	106	220
giga-	G	109	230
tera-	T	1012	240
peta-	P	1015	250
exa-	E	1018 *	260
zetta-	Z	1021 *	270
yotta-	Y	1024 *	280
* Not generally used to express data speed
** k = 103 and K = 210

[NYer]

To learn more about the Vatican Library visit Wikipedia

[babble-on]

that’s a lot of peta-files

[ArrogantBustard]

1) That note at the bottom " Not generally used to express data speed" should read "Not yet generally used to express data speed". We'll be talking about "Exabytes" and maybe even "zettabytes" in my lifetime, and I'm not young.

2) Digitizing these old documents is a revolutionary act for antiquities research; it allows pretty much anybody to peruse these old documents as much as they want without risk of damaging them.

3) This thread will provide yet another platform for the sewer-minded people to expose themselves.

[MAexile]

I remember when having megabytes was a big deal.

Pfffft. I remember kilobytes being a big deal.

My father used to program computers with punch cards.

So there!

[twister881]

Does pillow-bytes come before or after peta-bytes?

[Celtic Conservative]

Only after heavy peta-bytes.

CC

[Wally_Kalbacken]

That’s a $hitload of bytes!

[Rad_J]

You know how computers first had megabyte hard dives and then gigabyte hard drives and then terabyte hard drives? Next is petabytes. Do you know why they won’t make petabyte hard drives? Nobody wants a petafile on their computer.

[Salvation]

** the Vatican Apostolic Library holds many of the rarest and most valuable documents in existence including the 42 line Latin Bible of Gutenberg, the first book printed with movable type and dating between 1451 and 1455.**

Yes!

[muawiyah]

Time to fire up and practice with the Late Medieval latin translator, and I wonder if those Jewish guys have wrapped up the one for ladino ~ just all kinds of things there in that otherwise dead language!

[Mortrey]

The article didn’t address how the information would be input.

There are already inconsistancies between the KJV and the NIV concerning translations of certain words that change the meaning in some scripture.

Wonder if info is mannually input how many will intentionally mis-translate for the purpose of disception.

[Raymann]

Ah, here we go. The first Catholic conspiracy nut.

text files aren’t that large, that much storage space can only be needed for hi-res scans.

[Calvin Locke]

My father used to program computers with punch cards.

Punch cards were still around when I matriculated in the mid 1970s.

Now, if he had to enter the boot-strap loader via switches, then use paper tape to start to do real work, aka, load the "driver" for the card reader to load in the application before loading the data...

As for the Petabytes. I know it seems a lot, but an awful lot of it is imaging. What's a typical page of ASCII text? 2K? What's a typed page of scanned text? A page of scanned "artful" text? A page of illuminated "artful" type? Illuminated and hand written?

That's not to mention the aging and more than likely wear and tear imperfections of the pages.

After all, if you're going to that much trouble, you might as well go state of the art the first time to minimize additional handling of the originals.

I'd like to see if they have "Cuoco Secreto", translated of course.

[trebb]

Ah, here we go. The first Catholic conspiracy nut. text files aren’t that large, that much storage space can only be needed for hi-res scans.

I assume you are correct. On the flip side, the Vatican has more stuff stored away, that will never see the light of day, than any other institution in the world(I might be exaggerating a bit, but one can never tell when all the info isn't out there).

The question will be as to how much of it will be available to those who are merely curious.

[muawiyah]

The Vatican has an immense art collection ~ it'll all be scanned.

BTW, this isn't news ~ just the letting of a contract ~ finally!

[abb]

So could cave paintings be the first and original “hard drive?”

http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=3693

[glennaro]

Nobody wants a petafile on their computer

That's a good one! (Neither do I want a PETA-file.)

[sagar]

I refuse to use the metric “kilo” bytes, “giga” bytes, and “peta” bytes. I always say my files are “teenie”, “manageable”, “big”, “huge”, “crap ton”, etc.

[plain talk]

Wonder if info is mannually input how many will intentionally mis-translate for the purpose of disception.

? My guess is they will scan these books.