Note: This post is really about transportation, but ya gotta stick with it a while before further discussion of the I-25 S-Curve Study.

Remember the Haloid Xerox Foto-Flo Model C “photographic recorder”? You know, this:

Okay, maybe you don’t remember the Haloid Xerox Foto-Flo Model C “photographic recorder.”

I’ve been having an absolute whale of a time discovering more about the huge whale of a contraption above, after having first come across it while researching transpo stuff in the October 30, 1958 Albuquerque Tribune. This discovery has included help from the incredibly nice folks at Xerox Nostalgia. Sometimes the Internet is just delightful.

With this help, I’ve been able to transform the only visible words in the photo, Haloid Xerox, into the machine’s full Haloid Xerox Foto-Flo Model C “photographic recorder” glory. In more modern parlance, this contraption would be called a “copier.” Remember copiers? I also discovered that BernCo buying a Foto-Flo in 1958 is kinda funny in that Xerox came out with its revolutionary 914 the very next year.

The 914, which first sold for $27,000 (admittedly almost four Model C’s) could make seven copies a minute and, as this fascinating contempary ad points out, looks and operates like our modern conception of a copier. The Haloid Xerox Foto-Flo Model C “photographic recorder” made three copies a minute, required a single, unwieldy large paper size, and looks strikingly like an executionary electric chair.

So it could be argued that BernCo should have waited a year before buying its new “photographic recorder.” Our beloved County was not alone however. The folks at Xerox Nostalgia also sent me a wonderful story from the August 1958 business mag (remember business mags?) “Photo Methods for Industry” detailing how the brand spanking-new Haloid Xerox Foto-Flo Model C “photographic recorder” doubled copy capacity for Boston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. In modern parlance, the Foto-Flo was da bomb until it wasn’t.

Hey, I mentioned the Boston Metropolitan Transit Authority and that’s transportation! But the Boston MTA isn’t the transpo link I have in mind when thinking about the Haloid Xerox Foto-Flo Model C “photographic recorder.” No, that link is actually this:

I’m thinking the biggest problem amid all the many problems with the I-25 S-Curve Study (e.g., the whole study is based on the presumption drivers drive like shit and there’s nothing nobody can do about it) is that by the time:

1. The Study finally wraps up,
2. We finally get the funding to do whatever the Study finally recommends; and,
3. Finally construct whatever those recommendations are…

Driving will very likely look quite a bit different than does today. I can’t find any mention in any of the Study Report materials any information about autonomous vehicles, “smart” infrastructure that communicates with “smart” cars or anything else found in this and countless other literature about the very likely future of driving.

No, the Study ignores any mention of what driving will possibly/likely/definitely look like by the time the damn Study becomes the damn finished work, leaving us with the very possible outcome of tearing up this stretch of I-25, spending a shit-ton of money rebuilding it in a way that supposedly will reduce the number of shitty drivers running into other drivers, etc., then having to go back in to install smart infrastructure reflecting smart cars that will obviate the need to uncurve the curve (the whole point of the Study) in the first place.

So, this:

is this:

When it needs to be this (probably by doing nothing but waiting to install “smart” technology as part of a nationwide install):

Or something like that. Thanks again to Xerox Nostalgia for its help with today’s post.