International Project "Rescue of Old Analogue Magnetograms"
In 2002, the Division V “Geomagnetic Observatories, Surveys and Analyses” of the International
Association for Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) embarked on a new initiative to create an
“Old Analogue Magnetograms Inventory”, where it was proposed to the worldwide geomagnetic community
to begin converting old analogue magnetograms to the digital, computer-readable images.
In 2003, the International Council for Science (ICSU) awarded a proposal put forward by IAGA
to initiate a "Rescue of old analogue magnetograms by converting to digital images".
This project has successfully been completed and reported back to ICSU:
The IUGG Electronic Journal
Volume 4 No. 4 (April 1, 2004)
2003 ICSU Grant Report
The IUGG International Association for Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) received an award
of $35,000 from the International Council of Science (ICSU) in 2003 for their proposal
“Rescue of old analogue magnetograms by converting to digital images”. The project's outcome
is that 177 station-years of 64,650 of old and historic magnetograms from 9 Russian, two Indian,
and one German magnetic observatory are now converted to digital images, available at
http://apollo.wdcb.ru/historic/ and http://swdcft49.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/film/.
The stations chosen were selected from a pre-IGY Catalog of Analogue Geomagnetic
Data complied from the time period 1841-1960, and the most rare magnetograms
(those existing in one copy only) were digitized first. The magnetogram conversion technique
was developed by a team at Kyoto University, Japan. The hardware purchased with the project
support is now available for the staff at the World Data Centres in India, Russia, and Japan
for the follow-on conversion of analogue magnetograms into digital images in their routine work,
as well as for specific rescue projects.