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 Recollections of BBC engineering from 1922 to 1997		 The British Broadcasting Corporation
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Designs Department - Annual Reports
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The table below lists the present status of Designs Department Annual Reports.

Year Report available for scanning Text on web site Pictures on web site
    Click to see  
Earlier      
1974 Yes*    
1975      
1976 Yes*    
1977 Yes* Yes  
1978 Yes*    
1979 Yes*    
1980 Yes*    
1981 Yes*    
1982 Yes*    
1983 Yes*    
1984      
1985 Yes*    
1986-7 Yes*    
Later      
       
  (Blank = No)    
* Reports contributed by BBC/Paul Whiteing

I have access to a scanner with a sheet feeder that can scan a 50 page Annual Report, OCR the result and generate a set of html pages with virtually no user intervention (see example above).  The only problem is that the booklets have to be guillotined into A4 sheets which is a pity, but if the result is a set of searchable text that any web site visitor can see then I think it's worth it. 

During the course of 2006 I plan to get the guillotining done at a "copy shop" and scan the rest of the reports listed above. 

It's a fairly quick and easy process to scan/OCR the text, provided that I don't spend time checking it for accuracy (so I won't!).  It takes much longer to scan the pictures, so I will probably only scan a small proportion. 

Contributions

Do you have any of the missing reports?  If so would you be willing to:

  1. Let me cut them to pieces!
  2. Send me photocopies.
  3. Do the scanning/OCR yourself and send me the result.

Please let me know if you are willing to help complete the historical record.
ME
5/1/06