Friday the thirteenth of December 1996 was a lucky day. Daylight, such as it was, found me traveling south from Syracuse on Route 81 in a cold windy rain. I was going to visit an old friend from Cornell, L. Pearce Williams, Professor Emeritus, History of Science and Technology, Cornell University.

I had spent the previous several weeks searching library catalogs on the Internet for a copy of The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Lewis Campbell and William Garnett. This book was first published in 1882 by MacMillan and Co. in London. Initially, my primary interest was to obtain non-copyrighted images of James Maxwell to use in promoting software. Before actually contacting any of the libraries which had the book, I decided to give Pearce a call and he promptly volunteered his personal copy.

When I arrived at Pearce's home, the rain had nearly stopped. After making friends with Pearce's two large dogs, he gave me a tour of one awesome personal library. He was busy, so our visit was brief. On the way home, I started thinking (always a dangerous thing to do!), if it took this much trouble to find this 100 year old biography today, how much trouble is it going to be, say, another hundred years from now? A classic business phrase flashed in my mind, "Window of opportunity," then I looked at the book again. Now that I have the book, why not scan the whole thing into the computer?

Why not? Well, for one thing, it is well over 600 pages long. For another, I have a company to run. For a third, I have a family that needs attention. But then again, right now, I also have a window of opportunity to preserve this treasure for future generations. Even now, only a precious few people can get access to this book. A hundred years from now, the pages will be next to dust. It is now, or perhaps, never.

So, on the way home, I bought a scanner and an extra 2 GByte hard drive. The scanner came with software which seemed made to order for my task. I started scanning the book the same day. I finished scanning on December 27. Then I started converting the scans into text with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. Average scan time (including page straightening and cleaning) was three minutes per page. Average OCR time (including correcting OCR errors, given the quality of the 114 year old print) was about 10 minutes per page. I completed the OCR and proofing late in January of 1997. Later, after another visit to Prof. Williams, I scanned some additional material from the second edition (1884) which is not present in the first edition. All was finished by the end of February.

As I am not trained as a historian, I can not competently preface this work with a detailed historical commentary. However, I shall make several observations for the benefit of the uninitiated reader. First, the biography concentrates on Maxwell as a person, especially in his youth. Part II does cover his scientific achievements, however, the technical detail is limited. In particular, while his work on electromagnetics was recognized as important, it's ultimate impact was not yet realized. Maxwell's mechanical model for electromagnetics is described in detail, even though Maxwell appears to have abandoned it in his later years, leaving purely abstract mathematics to describe physical phenomena. Also keep in mind that Mrs. Maxwell was still living when this book was published. Several historians have suggested that the infrequent mention of her may be due to Campbell’s desire to refrain from all but positive references. This biography is a primary historical reference on Maxwell.

In the course of this work, it occurred to me that what I am doing does not yet have a name. After considering several possibilities, I settled on "digital preservation". If you are reading this digital preservation and enjoying the fruits of my "labour" someday, long after I, the book, and all my friends at Cornell have long since turned to dust and been forgotten, I would consider my quest successful. Please enjoy.

JAMES C. RAUTIO
Phoenix, NY
March 6, 1997