Size matters (Image: Felice Frankel)
Even the most committed Beatles fan might fail to spot the classic track in the image above. This is a chunk of a vinyl copy of the Revolver album, specifically part of Paul McCartney’s Eleanor Rigby, as seen through a Nomarski microscope, which uses differences in the record’s refractive index to emphasise its surface structure.
Vinyl is a data-storage medium steeped in nostalgia. It remains to be seen whether more recent storage systems, like the IBM Millipede will be remembered as fondly. The vinyl image, and an image of the Millipede, appear in a…
