🚀 go-pugleaf

sla...@hearsay.demon.co.uk (Simon Slavin) writes:
>In article <1996Sep6.1...@hpal02.isd4.tafensw.edu.au>,
>Roger....@tafensw.edu.au (Roger Douglas) wrote:

>> 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.

Did they have any warnings about using that lid every time?  I see a
lot of people (including myself) who rarely uses those photocopier
lids, especially when photocopying pages from books.  

Also, does anybody know how exactly x-rays can damage magnetic storage
media or the data on it?  Or how a photocopier can produce x-rays?
I admit I don't really know how a photocopier works, but most methods of
producing x-rays involve electrons accelerated onto some target, as far
as I know.

- Ken
-- 
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            Ken Kobayashi                  .   "Too low they build,
         kkob...@fas.harvard.edu          .    who build beneath the stars."
http://stargazer.student.harvard.edu/~ken/ .            - Edward Young