Historical Data

[geneh]

The following is a prime example of why sites such as this are of such value for storing historical data.

Gene

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
On November 13, 1997, Admiral Paul G. Gaffney, II, the Chief of Naval Research, wrote to the Archivist of the United States stating that the "historical record of our nation's scientific and technological heritage has suffered a serious and irreparable loss." Admiral Gaffney's letter detailed how the Washington National Records Center had destroyed Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) correspondence and laboratory notebooks dating from the 1940s. About the same time, several newspapers published stories on the destruction of the records, and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) received inquiries from professional organizations and others concerning the destruction.

I. INTRODUCTION
This study was undertaken at the request of the Archivist of the United States as an examination of the circumstances surrounding the destruction of certain Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) correspondence and laboratory notebooks scheduled within the currently approved Navy and Marine Corps Records Disposition Manual, initially processed as National Archives Job N1-NU-89-5 and subsequently issued by Navy as SECNAVINST 5212.5C. The two designations are interchangeable and will be used where chronologically appropriate; N1-NU-89-5 while in process by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and SECNAVINST 5212.5C after its issuance by Navy records management.
Approximately 600 cubic feet of laboratory correspondence dating from 1918-1986 and 250 cubic feet of laboratory notebooks dating from 1942-1969 were destroyed in the destruction cycles of October 1996, January 1997, and April 1997. We believe that valuable records of the Naval Research Laboratory were destroyed, particularly the laboratory correspondence series. The records were at the time of their destruction physically stored at the Washington National Records Center (WNRC). WNRC stores approximately 3,590,000 cubic feet of records of Federal agencies, 256,000 cubic feet of Navy records, and annually destroys an average of 144,700 cubic feet of records eligible for destruction.

[RabidAlien]

Heh. Sounds like a euphamism for "we destroyed a bunch of classified documents that could have been potentially embarrassing/incriminating". Kinda like the CIA always using those darn black highlighters...

[Njaco]

And yet each year they cram public libraries with thousands of cubic yards of the "United States Tax Code".