🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1996Sep6.1...@hpal02.isd4.tafensw.edu.au>,
Roger....@tafensw.edu.au (Roger Douglas) wrote:

> sla...@hearsay.demon.co.uk (Simon Slavin) expostulated:
> 
> >He probably means X-rays, which a large number of 1970s photocopiers
> >produced while scanning.  X-rays can, indeed, remagnetise some parts
> >of a floppy disk.  How do I know ?  I did a physics degree, wondered
> >about it, and tried it with a 5.25 inch disk.  After two or three
> >copies I was getting general read failures. [snip]
> 
> How did you determine that it was X-rays that corrupted them, and not static
> or a magnetic field from some of the moving parts, or indeed just the heat
> from the lamp?  

Fair question.  I didn't.  I strongly doubt it was heat, but it's
possible that some electro-magnetic activity did the erasing.

> The notion that 1970s photocopiers were giving off X-rays energetic
> enough to blitz a diskette sounds very suspect to me.  If this is
> true I can see Xerox being up for a major class action from 1970s
> office workers blaming everything from brain cancer to ingrowing
> toenails on the radiation from photocopiers.

Not unless they were photocopying body-parts.  The weighted lid which
was used to hold paper flat against the glass in those days almost
always had a lot of metal in it -- usually a metal sheet.  Possibly
for the very reason you just pointed-out.

Simon.
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