Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. Paul On Mar 22, 2011, at 3:29 AM, Joseph McAllister wrote:
> > I wasn't doing a lot of shooting that year, but I did have my black > Spotmatic, half a dozen lenses for it, fisheye to 300mm, a Pen FT with four > lenses, and a Pen S that I kept in the car. As explained in the rest of this > message, I couldn't take a camera anywhere near work, and hardly ever went on > a vacation. what I do have is mostly half-frame B&W of the pool-parties at > our house. Color full frame was reserved for the race track and pictures of > our Porsches at Summit Point Raceway in W. Virginia. > > In March of 1976, I was spending 5 days a week in what was called "The > Colony" in basement office space in Arlington Virginia while various agencies > did everything they could to find some dirt on me. Took them ten and a half > months before they could pronounce me worthy of a clearance high enough to > work on a "special project". Probably took that long because of the years I > spent in the Haight-Ashbury from 1966~1972 while attending college, following > four years in the Navy. > > By late October I was cleared and read into the project, which turned out to > be working at the business end of a bank of 5 watt laser powered used to lay > optical data one line at a time being downlinked from a satellite about the > size of the Hubble in low earth orbit, but pointing down instead of up. > > The whole job, as over the next ten years I filled almost every position > available, consisted of keeping at least four of these laser image > reconstructors (LIRs) ready at all times, loading and downloading the 500 to > 1000 feet of film that they output every 45 to 90 minutes, depending on if > two birds were imaging, or just one. The film, 9" the first few years, 5" > later on as resolution and accuracy ramped up, was run through one of six EK > made stainless steel monster 100 FPM processors that were 32 feet long, 10 > feet high, and from 2 feet at the stop, fix and wash to 12 feet deep at the > dry box. The leader rolls were 1000 feet as well. > >> From there a set of transparent positives were made, then a set of dupe negs >> from them, on 100 FPM drum contact printers. After those were processed, >> they were cut, packaged and addressed to be sent all over the world to U.S. >> intelligence agencies. Our allies were sent either 70mm magnetic tapes of >> the original downlinked data, but dumb'd down by from 1 to 7 levels of >> resolution.For the highest resolution, the data was encoded and transmitted >> back up to a satellite or two and back down to special portable or fixed >> sites. > > Google KH-11, Talent, Keyhole, and Itaclese. Spelling may be wrong on that > last one, as my laser-engraved walnut commemorative pencil holder is still > packed, somewhere. > > We received from 3 to 5 loaded plain white unmarked semi-trucks a week from > various supply depots around the country who had received shipments from > Kodak, either trucked in or in some cases flown in for re-delivery to our > site. Even our paychecks were cut in Texas and flown in using varying routes. > All film, chemicals, and spare parts were delivered this way. All our > effluent had to be pristine so our work there was not detectable. It was > passed through many layers of filtration, dilution, and a day in our 24 foot > diameter "rotating biological contactor" which was inhabited by "bugs" that > had an appetite for what we wanted to disappear. > > That was my more than full-time job for 11 years, until I pissed off my > supervisor's supervisor one too many times by correcting him when he uttered > something incorrect that would have hurt our timeline. It had to be done… > :-) > > P.S. - Don't mention a word of this to anyone! But do read "The Falcon and > the Snowman" if you've time. > > > > Joseph McAllister > [email protected] > > THE SENILITY PRAYER : > Grant me the senility to forget the people > I never liked anyway, > The good fortune to run into the ones I do, and > The eyesight to tell the difference. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
