Did Something Important Happen In 1957?

It was a great year for rock and roll, the space race and classic cars, but something else happened too!

What this company does many millions of times annually didn’t exist until 1957. At that time, a researcher named Russell Kirsch of Gaithersburg Maryland invented a crude version of an image scanner. He and his team were able to capture a digital facsimile of a portrait of his 3-month old son, Walden. The image was quite low resolution, but it was revolutionary none the less.

First Document Imaging Scanner at MCS in 1992

Over the 7 decades that have followed, massive advancements have been made in terms of scanner design and features. MCS purchased our first document imaging scanner in 1992. It scanned at a rate of 20 odd pages per minute! Our current production scanners are almost 10 times faster! Back in the early days of offering scanning services, desktop computers weren’t powerful enough to keep up with the demands scanners would place on them so special (expensive) interface board were required. 30 years later this is no longer the case.

Document Image Scanning Software

Scanning software has also changed dramatically over the past 32 years. Back in 1992, we were limited to commercial offerings, which forced us to fit within the boundaries/limitations of what was available. As our capabilities increased we became much more flexible in terms of responding to client requests as we started creating our own production software. Having this capability has allowed MCS to consistently produce high quality results for our customers while remaining very price competitive.

Over the past 32 years, in addition to offering the ability to scan virtually any type of records our clients have paper documents, microfilm/fiche, large format, aperture cards etc, we have consistently prided ourselves through our insistence to keep our hardware fleet up to date. In the past 12 months, we have spent over $100,000.00 on new scanning equipment.

At MCS, we want to continue to set the pace for document imaging services in BC!