A Country Doctor In Washington
02/10/24 01:01 PM Filed in: Family
[updated 2/13/2014]
Monday, 2/12/2024, will be the twentieth anniversary of my Dad's death. My sister graciously reminded me today that I have had Dad's manuscript for his autobiography, "A Country Doctor In Washington", for twenty years having received it from her care so that I could transcribe it into digital form. Dad originally composed it using WordPerfect and saved it on 3.5" floppy disks. If I had the discs I suppose I could buy an external floppy drive and read the files using LibreOffice or similar. But I don't think the disks exist. Too, he printed out the massive manuscript (I estimate 750 pages) and started proofing it manually.
I started scanning it and used OCR technology to transcribe it. But the OCR software of the time wasn't up to the task. So I set it aside. Today, my wife pulled some boxes out of storage to see if we could get rid of anything and the manuscript was in one of them. OCR technology has greatly improved - I managed to get through 10 pages in about an hour.
This work in progress is here.
A copy of my parents' final divorce decree was found between the pages of the manuscript.
Monday, 2/12/2024, will be the twentieth anniversary of my Dad's death. My sister graciously reminded me today that I have had Dad's manuscript for his autobiography, "A Country Doctor In Washington", for twenty years having received it from her care so that I could transcribe it into digital form. Dad originally composed it using WordPerfect and saved it on 3.5" floppy disks. If I had the discs I suppose I could buy an external floppy drive and read the files using LibreOffice or similar. But I don't think the disks exist. Too, he printed out the massive manuscript (I estimate 750 pages) and started proofing it manually.
I started scanning it and used OCR technology to transcribe it. But the OCR software of the time wasn't up to the task. So I set it aside. Today, my wife pulled some boxes out of storage to see if we could get rid of anything and the manuscript was in one of them. OCR technology has greatly improved - I managed to get through 10 pages in about an hour.
This work in progress is here.
A copy of my parents' final divorce decree was found between the pages of the manuscript.
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