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Above: A sample of part of a page from Coggeshall, Essex 1841 Census
(Scans by Parish Chest) Nothing special. Just a normal scan taken at
random.
A posting seen on one of the family history mailing lists
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Jenny <jennifer.j2@ukonline.co.uk> writes
>Dear list,
>I have just bought the 1841 census for Essex on CDs, and though it came
>with a warning that some pages were illegible, I crossed my fingers
>that they wouldn't be the very ones that I needed.
>Alas, some of the pages for Great Coggeshall are
virtually blank. Does
>anyone know if any older microfilms or fiches (or transcripts) exist,
>where these pages might still be legible? |
Of course, Jenny was not referring to an 1841 census on CD
from Parish Chest.
The 1841 census is hard to scan. It is hard to
read! But the sample above shows that it is not impossible to produce very
good and readable scanned images from the census films.
First a little background.... take a £45,000 film scanner... and then
do some experiments with a £4,000 add on widget to the film scanner
to try to overcome that problem, plus extra image enhancement techniques.
It worked. ;-)
That is what Parish Chest did.
As a result of seeing that posting on the family history mailing list, we
tried to find the worst page from that Essex film. Here is a part
of the scan of that page, reproduced at actual scan size (the size that Archive
CD Books use on their CDs - so you can zoom in to read the really difficult
ones in detail. Normally you wouldn't need to view it at this size).
This is the worst one that we could find. (HO107/335 /7 folio 5
pages 3& 4).
Can you read it?
It is a scan by Parish Chest. Compare it with others that you have
seen.
Where would you purchase your 1841 census CDs from?
If you would like a preview of the results, two full pages from the Essex
1841 census, (one normal HO107/335/5 folio 35 page 23/24), one which is poor
(HO107/335/7 folio 5 page 3/4), the full pages as the images above, to compare
them with any other scanning system then :
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Right click on the link below to download the file
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From the drop down menu, select "Save Target As...."
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Select a place on your hard disk to download the file.
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Then when the download is complete, simply view the file 1841ess1.pdf using
Adobe Acrobat Reader in the normal way.
Please note: if you simply click on the link with the left mouse button,
the file will try to display in a window live. This may not work for many
people, therefore follow the instructions above to right click on the link
and select to save the file instead.
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