From Spiegel OnLine International:
"It's amazing how little you can know about your own father: After the death of Berlin resident Manfred Beier in 2002, his sons Wolf and Nils began to sort out their inheritance and came across a treasure. They found dozens of wooden boxes stacked on shelves as well as numerous chests of drawers -- similar to pharmacist cabinets and apparently custom-made. The drawers contained removable inserts, each of which had staggered rows of small drilled holes about three centimeters in diameter. Each of these holes held a roll of miniature film.
The brothers knew their father had taken a good deal of photographs throughout his life. But this? They could only estimate the number of pictures that their father had left behind: some 60,000, plus a series of home movies -- a seemingly unmanageable collection. In his basement, though, they found 38 notebooks that served as the keys to the collection. The orderly, handwritten notes -- on roughly 4,000 sheets of paper -- helped the brothers keep an overview of all the film rolls as they rummaged through the basement. Manfred Beier had made a chronological list of every photo, complete with an archival numbering system. The notes detailed exactly how each picture came to be -- the day, hour, and minute it was taken; the camera, aperture, and shutter speed used to take it; and the exact location of its subject."
Go here to view a sample of the photos.
"It's amazing how little you can know about your own father: After the death of Berlin resident Manfred Beier in 2002, his sons Wolf and Nils began to sort out their inheritance and came across a treasure. They found dozens of wooden boxes stacked on shelves as well as numerous chests of drawers -- similar to pharmacist cabinets and apparently custom-made. The drawers contained removable inserts, each of which had staggered rows of small drilled holes about three centimeters in diameter. Each of these holes held a roll of miniature film.
The brothers knew their father had taken a good deal of photographs throughout his life. But this? They could only estimate the number of pictures that their father had left behind: some 60,000, plus a series of home movies -- a seemingly unmanageable collection. In his basement, though, they found 38 notebooks that served as the keys to the collection. The orderly, handwritten notes -- on roughly 4,000 sheets of paper -- helped the brothers keep an overview of all the film rolls as they rummaged through the basement. Manfred Beier had made a chronological list of every photo, complete with an archival numbering system. The notes detailed exactly how each picture came to be -- the day, hour, and minute it was taken; the camera, aperture, and shutter speed used to take it; and the exact location of its subject."
Go here to view a sample of the photos.
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