[GH85Carrera]

Yea, the Library of Congress is an institution we all want to think has top processionals and archivists taking great care of the possessions of the people. Unfortunately they have typical civil service attitude people that do the minimum work possible.

Since the 1930s when the feds starting paying farmers to NOT grow crops, there has been some cheating. A farmer takes the money and grows crops anyway. The feds have had the USDA flying the country county by county state to state. Oklahoma was flown in the 1930s on 9x9 aerial film. The geniuses in the government decided that 1930s imagery should be shipped to the Library of Congress. Instead of storing it properly the morons made duplicate negative on 5x5 film, and they did did not even have the camera in focus. Then they destroyed the original negatives.

We can order them but is is stupid complex. We can't call them or email them. Only a FAX. They might or might not reply so we keep sending a fax about once a week until one of the employees decides to look at it. They will tell us they do or don't have a particular image and what the file number is. To get a copy of the image we have to hire an independent authorized archivist to go into the archives and scan the negative on premises. He has a standard non photogrammetric consumer level scanner. It cost a lot for him to make the scan. It might take 6 months to get a final image from them.

I have had to do that only twice now. One customer wanted any aerial from the 1700s to date. I asked he if she knew when the airplane was invented.