[rescue] In Realtime: Saving 25, 000 Manuals ??? August 15, 2015

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:59:31AM -0400, J. Alexander Jacocks wrote:
> The estimates that I have seen posted online, for the number of manuals,
> seem to me to be woefully low.

I concur.  I was there Monday and Tuesday afternoons, working my way
through a seemingly-endless selection of Tektronix manuals.  (So if,
years from now, it turns out that I included some duplicates: I'm sorry,
but there was considerable time pressure.)

There's a photoset up here:

	https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/sets/72157657277241785

It would have been nice if someone, anyone, could have taken all the
leftovers and distributed them around the planet -- but given the
logistics (including the timeframe and the expense) that wasn't possible.
The one thing that I did make sure of was that the small remaining
stack of (duplicate) Heathkit manuals left that building in the hands
of someone who's going to do the right thing with them.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that 100K manuals were rescued.
Some of the ones I handled were still shrink-wrapped; others were in
surprising good shape given their vintage.  And of course others were
in more dubious condition.

The best moment came when I flipped open a binder and found that
an engineer, 30+ years ago, had added a hand-written supplement
in the back, with beautiful circuit diagrams and equations.  I hope
that when that's scanned, whenever and wherever that happens, that
the person handling it will include that as a supplement, even though
it wasn't an official Tektronix document.

---rsk