Foto-Mem
company
Foto-Mem Inc. was a US company that attempted to introduce very large computer memory systems based on optical storage on microfiche cards. An alternate product line based on the same mechanical systems allowed a single microfiche card to be displayed on multiple workstations, intended for large libraries where a single card might be used by several people at once. Only one such system was ever delivered, a microfiche reader for The New York Times; this system was never successful and the company failed as a result.
FM 390
The company was formed on May 5, 1967 by James Laura, who considered himself primarily a financial consultant, but had some experience in computers. His idea was to use existing microfiche systems to develop a computer memory system with a "multi-billion bit capacity", a concept IBM had recently introduced in a more complex and less-standard fashion as the IBM 1360 Photostore. The 1360 used custom film "chips" packed into custom boxes used with custom hardware to move and file them. In comparison, the Foto-Mem concept would use standard microfiche ISO A5 (105 x 148 mm) cards, using a laser to read and write the cards instead of the Photostore's complex electron-beam writer. Additionally the mechanical systems were developed for other purposes by a 3rd party, Mosler, who sold a sorting system known as the Selectriever. By combining the two technologies, Laura could develop a highly competitive device for costs well below the Photostore.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1439577. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1967 and 1360.
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This entry incorporates text from “Foto-Mem” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.