Wow, I was looking to see if Rod Serling from the Twilight Zone was watching from around a wall. I felt like I was in the twilight zone.
One of the challenges of finding the old historical negatives we have is figuring out which system was in use for that era. The former owner invented his own system for filing negatives and would just start completely over with a new system but never update the old negative numbers to the newer system. Then a few years later start a new system or throw in some of the old system. It has taken me 10 years to get to know the different ways of finding a negative in a date range.
I was looking for a certain square mile and according to that reference book it was supposed to be in 4490-17. The final step is to lay eyes on the image to see if if looks like the reference image. Nothing was the same, I kept looking and trying to figure out what was where and nothing was even close. I finally walked away, answered a few emails and then went back to the start over from the beginning. Looking closely I found the answer. It was supposed to be negative 4990-17!
The former owner was not known for his penmanship except for maybe a lack of it. That 9 looked more like a 4. I rewrote it in cleanly and I think Rod Serling went away.
So the lesson is: 4 is a lot different than 9. I just thought might want to know that.
