Knowledge preservation

How to best preserve our knowledge (physical and spiritual) and texts?

See - https://rebrand.ly/dg-archive for context.

Here is a survey of various inputs for archival preservation.

Media and pigments

Lists of oldest surviving documents - wiki

Generally, the amount of energy expended in bonding the pigment to the medium is equal to the energy required in dissociating them. Eg. 1300 degrees Celsius for ceramic microfilms, UV light for UV bonded pigments etc..

Current top options

In descending order of longevity and utility-

  • ceramic tile page stamps (for offset printing)
  • ceramic tile pages with laser engraving or fused dyes
  • Stable metal (eg. Nickel) sheet page stamps
  • Stable metal pages with laser engraving

6k+ yr

Ceramics

Ceramic microfilms

The specially-developed Ceramic microfilm MOM project, which is a 1 mm thick rock-hard sheet 8 x 8 inches (20 × 20 cm). The tablets can withstand alkali and acid environments, but also temperatures up to 1300 degrees Celsius. A laser is then used to etch character, full-colour graphics.

MOM Print standards

MOM Prints -

  • Uses b/w contrast for texts and mono-coloured graphics.
  • A print with special ceramic colour-stains (in a 300 dpi resolution) for photographs and illustrations

Per Martin Kunze - It is made with a picosecond engraving-laser.

The smallest text size is 4 pt in Arial style (1.41 mm). It is the still readable with the naked eye. The capacity (of latin letters) is about 40 000 characters on the 20x20 cm surface of a MOM tablet.

Further compression : Here text is downsized (five lines per mm), but easily readable with a 10x magnifier. A tablet of Ceramic Microfilm (20×20 cm) can carry up to 5 million characters, this equals 5×400-pages books. (Half way during the development of the Cerabyte technology and patented this as a kind of ceramic microfilm)

Pigments and colors

Ceramic toner is made of inorganic pigments and materials that are stable at high temperatures (typically fired between 580°C and 1250°C).

Inkjet ceramic inks - Liquid ceramic pigment suspensions.

Longevity

High quality ceramic tiles don’t break that easily. Smaller size will reduce shattering too.

And even if broken, pieces will remain legible.

Plus if installed on wall or floor, no falling chance. We have beautiful ceramic tiles from roman times.
But these tiles can be stored just as they are - in special wood cases and such as MoM switzerland does.

Clay tablets

Babylonian clay tablets have survived from 4000 BCE (=7k years). But they are fragile - and need to be preserved.

David Zaitlyn used morse in 2013.

Stone

Stone tablets survive from 3500 BCE.

Is there an automated rock engraver - to engrave given text into a rock slab??

Synthetic sapphire disks

Synthetic sapphire disc of 200mm diameter from ARNANO.

Religious oral tradition

Eg. Vedas.

Nickel

Durability
  • Pure 100% nickel; Nickel has no half-life; it’s a stable element; it lasts forever
  • Nickel is used in ocean motors and in rockets because of its properties. Stainless steel only needs 7% of nickel to make it not rust
  • Hard metal that is difficult to damage physically. Withstands exposure to a wide range of chemicals. Does not oxidize
  • Biological organisms cannot consume or damage it.
  • Not affected by radiation, heat, cold, humidity, moisture or even immersion in freshwater; salt water can gradually affect it but even after many thousands of years of constant salt water exposure, the content is retrievable,
  • Still readable even after thousands of years exposed to oxygen or submerged in water
  • 2000 degree Fahrenheit sustained direct heat from a blowtorch will not damage it
  • Electric and magnetic fields have no effect on it. Strong radiation from nuclear blasts, high energy cosmic rays, or electromagnetic pulses will not damage the content. Designed to preserve information in case of nuclear war (Studied by Los Alamos National Laboratories; extensively tested)
Nanofiche
  • Rosetta Nickel Disk (Long Now).

The Library is housed within a 100 gram nanotechnology device that resembles a 120mm DVD. However it is actually composed of 25 nickel discs, each only 40 microns thick, that were made for the Arch Mission Foundation by NanoArchival.

The first four layers contain more than 60,000 analog images of pages of books, photographs, illustrations, and documents - etched as 150 to 200 dpi, at increasing levels of magnification, by optical nanolithography. The first analog layer is the Front Cover and is visible to the naked eye. …

Beneath the analog layers of the Library are 21 layers of 40 micron thick nickel foils, each containing a DVD master.
Source: TW, arch

Metal grammaphone records

Can even record sound for grammaphone.

Voyager golden record - copper disk 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter plated first with nickel and then gold. The record’s cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Expected to remain intelligible for more than a billion years in sterile space.

Other Metal plates

Metal plates risk being stolen, melted and reused in a metal-scarce world.

Metal engraving is relatively easy with a CNC machine. YT

Fused quartz Crystals

can store up to 360 terabytes of information (in the largest size) without loss for billions of years.
It can withstand the high and low extremes of freezing, fire and temperatures of up to 1000°C. The crystal can also withstand direct impact force of up to 10 ton per cm2 and is unchanged by long exposure to cosmic radiation.

The team at Southampton, led by Professor Peter Kazansky , use ultra-fast lasers to precisely inscribe data into nanostructured voids orientated within silica - with feature sizes as small as 20 nanometres.

Unlike marking only on the surface of a 2D piece of paper or magnetic tape, this method of encoding uses two optical dimensions and three spatial co-ordinates to write throughout the material - hence the ‘5D’ in its name.
Source: TW

.5-1k yr

Polymer Nanofiche

  • Nanofiche can be replicated from nickel to polymer any number of times, inexpensively. Polymer lasts for 400 to 700 years. Source: TW

Piql film

arctic world archive uses piqlFilm, which claims -

  • Longevity tested to survive for over 500 years.
  • Future-proof WORM medium Offline and secure

Silicon Waferfiche

Source: TW

  • temperature, fire and water-resistant
  • Needs only a magnifying glass to read.
  • photolithographic inscription small copies

Material

Layers - Silicon wafer base + metal letters + micron thin glass layer.
Glass layer prevents metal migration and oxidation.
Si-metal bond only disintegrates at 1000K.

Metal used is usually Al or Au.

YT

Process

  • Buy silicon wafer.
  • Add photoresist layer.
  • Project text image.
  • Get metal to bond with photoresist layer parts matching letters.
  • wash away photoresist layer.
  • Add glass layer.
Cost

it costs about ten times less to store documents on Waferfiche than on microfilm.

202308 info -

Like all semiconductor products, it is very much a function of volume and labor costs.
In Bharat, a one time investment of about $250 K, and approximately Rs 5K per waferfiche.

Archival DVDs

  • 1000 Years claimed life. 100+ years as per accelerated aging testing.
    • write-once (WORM) media
    • Non-contact read/write technology
    • Durable and resilient in a wide range of environmental conditions
    • Resistant to water damage
    • Readable more than one million times
  • W
  • Capacities
    • Sony Optical Disc Archive (ODA) discontinued
      • W
      • 5.5 TB. Average read rate of 375MB/s
      • humidity-proof polycarbonate media substrate (similar to M-Disc) which is not affected by electromagnetic/gamma/alpha radiation, most chemicals or fluid contaminants
      • standard 405 nm optical laser
    • 100GB disks available.
    • Hitachi/LG Digital Storage Blank M-Disc DVD+R | 4.7GB | 3 Pack Jewel Case

Washi paper

  • Hand crafted to last 1k years - bbc

Palm leaf / birch manuscripts

Last few decades to 600 years, depending on local climatic conditions.

Classical techniques -

  • Engrave letters with a stylus, then fill with ink. (Even when ink fades away, the engraving stays. So can be read with multi-spectral imaging.)

Laser engraving on palm leaves, Pune 2024 : TW.

Papyrus

Made from plant leaves. No fold-endurance - Used as a scroll. Degrades due to acidic nature.

Dead Sea Scrolls were preserved due to low-circulation arid atmosphere.

Microfilms

polyester based microfilm - .1-.5k yrs. Used for storing newspapers.

Microfiche has a life expectancy of up to 800 years, under ideal HVAC (temperature and humidity ) controlled conditions.
However most State Archives only certify microfiche, for 25 to 50 years,
after which point a new copy of the media must be generated.

Parchment (Skin)

Treated animal skin. If reused, called palimpest.
Parchments from 1600 years ago survive - many were in regular use for hundreds of years. YT

Laser engraving on skin is possible. YT

DNA

Artifical amber

an option is to encode future Arch Libraries into synthetic DNA molecules and then to embed these into substances such as Artificial Amber for long-term preservation and discovery in the future. … DNA is quite stable if adequately protected. Source: TW

Junk DNA

One possible target for this type of synthetic biology approach that we have considered is to utilize the so-called “junk DNA” region of the human genome, or of other species, as the carrier region for a payload of genetically encoded knowledge. However, unless such information is somehow linked to a gene that has selective advantages to survival (such as reproduction, for instance), it would get weeded out by natural selection over time. Source: TW

.1k-.3k yr

Museum grade paper

Curators love these papers because they’re made of 100% cotton rag and have no OBAs. The base stock is both acid- and lignin-free. The coating is acid-free.

it must be manufactured using pure cotton fibres (a.k.a. cotton rag) or pure alpha cellulose fibres, which are naturally more durable than wood pulp.

Must still be saved from acidic mats and sunlight.

Archival paper

Archival papers are (~100%) acid-free and lignin-free.
They can be made of virgin tree fiber (alpha-cellulose) or 25% to 100% cotton rag.
Oft contains an alkaline reserve of calcium or magnesium carbonate to prevent acid degradation. This alkaline reserve can be achieved by adding bicarbonate during the drying process, which converts to calcium or magnesium carbonate. To last at least 100 years, archival paper needs an alkaline reserve of at least 2%.

Still, atmospheric pollutants cause acidity and degradation.

Files can be stored on paper - PaperBack -

If you have a good laser printer with the 600 dpi resolution, you can save up to 500,000 bytes of uncompressed data on the single A4/Letter sheet. Integrated packer allows for much better data density - up to 3,000,000+ (three megabytes) of C code per page. Source: TW

UV ink on ceramic tiles

UV flatbed printing uses UV-cured inks that sit on top of the tile surface. While these inks are durable, water-resistant, and fade-resistant under normal conditions, they can degrade over long periods, especially with prolonged UV exposure, abrasion, or harsh environmental conditions. The inks are not fused into the tile body but rather bonded to the surface, making them less durable than kiln-fired ceramics

UV flatbed printers - While UV-cured inks are designed to withstand sunlight, excessive exposure to UV rays can cause fading and discoloration over time. To minimize this risk, consider applying a UV-protective coating or installing shading devices, such as awnings or pergolas, in outdoor areas.

3D printed plastics

YT

PETG

  • withstands 200 deg C.
  • Combined with a resin, it is UV resistent.

.01k yr

Shellac records

Quite brittle.

Vinyl records

Last 100 yrs under good conditions.

Aluminium sheets

Corroded with holes in 50 years in tropical outdoors.

Magnetic tape

  • LTO Tape made with Barium Ferrite 50 yrs. FF
  • Capacity (Native uncompressed) per Tapes (Data Cartridge):
    • LTO-7 6 TB
    • LTO-8 12 TB
    • LTO-9 18 TB
    • LTO-10 30 TB
  • Cost (India 2025):
    • LTO Tapes (Data Cartridge) ₹ 500-750 / TB
    • LTO Tape Drive (can vary depending on internal, standalone, Type-C, SAS, SATA etc.):
      • Used LTO-7 ₹ 1.80 lakhs + GST
      • New LTO-8 ₹ 3.50 lakhs + GST
      • New LTO-9 ₹ 4.15 lakhs + GST
      • New LTO-10 ₹ 10+ lakhs + GST

Pigment Ink

Pigment inks offer fade resistance of 70-200+ years under proper conditions.

  • UV and moisture resistant due to particle structure
  • Particles bond with paper fibers for permanent adhesion
  • Water resistance once fully dried

Photo grade paper

Most photo-grade paper is resin-coated and designed to look and feel like modern photo lab paper. The core is covered by a thin layer of polyethylene (plastic) coating, which gives the paper its photo feel, stability (flatness), water resistance, handling resistance, and excellent feed consistency.

All resin-coated papers fall short of archival-grade for two reasons. First, the plastic content is not technically archival by museum standards. Second, the resin coating is slightly acidic, which will deteriorate the paper over time.

Dye ink

4 - 20 yrs before beginning to fade.

Powder ink

20 to 50 years on acid free paper.

  • Physical toner particles can detach from paper over time, unlike absorbed inks
  • Toner particles easily break down under UV light exposure

“Toner for Xerox colour copiers that is displayed in normal lighting (no UV, no sunlight) should show minimal fading after four years. After fifteen years it will fade about 30%. The toner should stay bonded to the paper for the life of the paper.”

Common paper

Paper, having acid, degrades over time.
Wood pulp is oft used. Has lignin, which breaks down to acid over time.
you can put stable ink on non-archival paper and still achieve 70 years of on-display life.

CDs, Hard disk

CDs are vulnerable to wear
hard drives limited by lifespan of only 4-5 years

Binding

1k yr

  • sewn bindings (long-fiber linen or similar high-strength threads)
    • they distribute stress evenly across the spine, minimizing wear compared to glued bindings.
    • stitching often outlasts the paper itself.

.1k yr

  • Monel Staples: Monel is a nickel-copper alloy known for its exceptional corrosion resistance, especially in marine or industrial environments, surpassing even stainless steel in longevity for extremely harsh conditions
  • Stainless steel staples (304 or 316) rarely rust, even in harsh or humid conditions, due to their high chromium content which forms a passive oxide layer that protects the metal from corrosion.

.01k yr

  • Zinc or nickel coated steel wire staples are relatively rust free. TW
    • In typical indoor or dry environments, these staples may resist rust for 20 to 50 years, but their corrosion resistance is much lower in outdoor, humid, coastal, or polluted areas
  • Steel wire Staples begin to rust and decolorize paper in a quite fast.
  • Metal Spiral (Steel/Aluminum), Wire-O Binding (Double-Loop Wire) - several years to decades
  • Plastic Spiral (PVC/Polypropylene) rib - to High (5-10 years)

Retrieval/ playback

Grammaphone doesn’t require electricity to play sound. It’s relatively easy to construct.

Magnifying lens

The first recorded evidence of a magnifying device is in a joke in Aristophanes’ The Clouds, from 424 BC, although there are also artifacts that may be even earlier magnifiers. … Compound microscopes began to become available in the 1674, when Anton van Leeuwenhoek first discerned cells and bacteria at 270X magnification, and by the late 1600s microscopy had advanced enough to see the analog images we encode into the Arch Libraries. Source: TW

Technology risk

If you rely on proprietary software to store your material (office, databases, cloud-subscriptions, etc.), everything will be gone in less than half a century (at least if you don’t have more resources than US government and NASA: Many of the recordings of the space explorations of the 60ies are now inaccessible: neither the machines nor the knowledge is available today to access it). - digitaldharma

Storage

  • Cold storage reduces chemical decay rate.
  • Low humidity prevents mold.
  • Store away from insects and rodents.

Redundancy

  • Industry standard best practice 3-2-1 strategy
    • 3 copies of data
    • 2 different storage technologies
    • 1 copy air-gapped (offline)

Area calculation

Page capacities

  • A4 ( 21.0 cm x 29.7 cm) = 623.7 sqcm . (42.8% zoom)
    • Fits about closely packed 6800 devanAgarI akShara-s with minimal margines and common sandhi/ saMhitA.
    • Luxurient verse spacing

Example requirements

  • shrIbhAShyam 32.5k akShara-s.
    • 47-50 A4s

Profession

  • Record keepers
    • Recordkeepers are responsible for documents from the moment they are created by an entity up to and beyond the point when they are preserved solely as archives
  • Archivists
    • Archivists tend to be responsible for records once they become archives and are thus no longer used for their original purpose.
    • Canadian council of Archives recommendations 2003

Location

Temples

  • one should have an effort to engrave important texts on to temple walls.
  • One dream is for deities to have necklaces of metal disks (like cd-s) on which would be engraved important texts.

Other efforts

  • Memory of Mankind archive - Hallstatt/Austria
    • The geological structure of the surrounding rock must not destroy the archive.

Recording

  • Paper printing see: TW
  • Laser engraving see: TW

Content

  • Global village construction kit here