IML: Short History of the Site and where we're headed

[Kenyon Wills <imperialist1960@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://imperialclub.com/OIC-specific/TeamOfVolunteers/index.htm

For a historical-themed site, we have not documented
our internal journey, and I wasn't in the first group,
so please speak up if I'm omitting something; here's
what I know:


Tony Lindsey (see the link at top of page) started an
Imperial email ring where all messages flowed to him -
he'd then turn the messages around and forward them to
all.  

What would YOUR Imperial life feel like without access
to the rest of us and the fountain of information that
one now gets online?  ...That's why we're all here!

This was, as I understand it, an organic thing that
just made sense as soon as people started to learn of
it as the www came into more common usage, and for
whatever reason, Imperial owners seem to have had a
large population of "early adopters" that were on the
www early on, so things got rolling in 95 or 96.


Tony got tired of the work after a time and he decided
that it wasn't his thing.  Very time consuming, as I
understand it.  I have heard a few versions of this,
so don't know what actually happened.  Leslie, who
appears here from time to time was the person that
managed to prop things up and keep the place going,
with the additions of other key volunteers such as
Mike and Chris Trettin and Mr. Hogg, as well as some
of the folks that are still listed on the IML
volunteer pages such as Jeff Ingraham, Steve, and
Elijah....  Please don't kill me if I'm leaving folks
out - don't want to skip anyone...  There were
certainly others such as Whiteshoes Johnson that
seriously pitched in as moderators and so forth - I
have some empty spots there....The place was/is
altruistic and part of the "Free Resource"
thinking/movement that spawned such things as
craigslist (as opposed to for-profit online stuff like
e-commerce).


Manuel Alvarez was tapped to help with supporting the
site and mailing list, and DTE is still supporting the
mailing list.

I joined later, as did many of the other volunteers
have as well.  The volunteer group has certainly had
its ups and downs with some high drama and perhaps
what one might call dirty laundry.  Perhaps when we're
farther away from all of that we can go into more
detail?  Not now - too close to it still.

We have now migrated our site to a server independent
of DTE for larger space and cost-effectiveness, since
Manuel was donating our space and it made sense to
pull our own weight, after all.

Where the site has gone and is going?

When I arrived, I was faced with insistent (good
natured) IML messages from Hugh Hemphill trumpeting
the recent addition of a set of ads to the 1958 page,
making it the "no. 1 page on the site due to 1958
having such superior qualities" and so forth.  I
looked at the 1960 page and sure saw an awful lot of
space there.  Since I KNEW that 1960 was actually THE
year of all years, I started looking for material with
which to trump old Mr. Hugh and his overly active
typing.  The site owes Hugh for motivating me on the
1960 page - that's for certain, so say hi to him and
shake his hand if you see him in person for me.

You can check out the site as it evolved here:

NOTICE ANY DIFFERENCES????:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/%20http://imperialclub.com/



Anyway, the site has grown and we now have almost
every ad from every year.  We have almost every sales
flyer, and every specification.  If it was in print
and came up on everyone's favortite online auction
site, there's a 90% chance that it's posted - only a
few very pricey items have escaped our grasp.  


If you've not tried the yearly imperial pages other
than your own, you're missing out.  

Some special areas would include the WAR YEARS page
with the airplane on the "Years" page - what did
Chrysler do in the war effort?  There is a story of
the Sperry Gyrocompass there that's pretty super, and
we have stuff on Tanks, Projectiles, Atomic Stuff, and
Radar coming soon.

What's left to do?

We have gaps left to fill in the Service Manuals,
although we have nearly all of them scanned - just
need to complete the difficult task of processing
them.  Folks don't really notice what goes into the
site, so I'll take a moment to explain that:

First: item gets procured.
Second: item gets scanned.
Thrid:  item gets uploaded to a temporary holding pen
where other volunteers can get the "raw" image.
Fourth:  item gets straightened, descreened,
color-corrected, and if needed stitched.  Note that
many of the color catalogs and ads are too large to
fit the platen of a scanner?  At that point,
overlapping scans are made and a volunteer uses
photoshop or some other application to match edges and
seam them together.  There is some real electronic art
going on that shows as a final product that you'd
never think took 6 hours to create...  
Fourth:  Image is "cleaned up".  These originals are
25-80 years old.  Most of the online stuff looks
perfect - ever notice that there are so few artifacts?

So anyway, once the image is done, we then upload
THREE copies to the site - a small one, a medium one,
and a giant, full-resolution one that allows printing
of one's own in full resolution should you want a full
size or expanded image.  This requires translation
into a www page.  

Now apply this manual process to a 600 page Service
Manual.  We just had Frank Winnips join in the last 6
months, and he seems to have a way to automate/speed
up the process.  Until now, each FSM represents at
least 80 hours of work.  Perhaps more? 

http://imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/index.htm
http://imperialclub.com/Articles/index.htm
http://imperialclub.com/Part/Lit/index.htm

(and we already have 22 (!!!) of FSM's, 300+ magazine
articles, several hundred LIFE-sized magazine ads that
had to get re-stitched together) and you're starting
to  get what's going on with half the site, work-wise.
 People seem to take it for granted.  The site is now
25,000 pages and was a serious nut to chew and
swallow.


Now look at the PARTS section where we have listed
EVERY vendor that we know of, 

http://imperialclub.com/Part/index.htm

the REPAIR section where we have archived THOUSANDS of
discussions on whatever Fix-It area you might need to
look up, 

http://imperialclub.com/Repair/index.htm

and then go over to the MOVIES section and you're
starting to get through 2/3 of the site.  

http://imperialclub.com/Movies/index.htm





Anyway, I digress.

The Service Manual project has the following FSM's in
queue to go up (we could use the help of anyone
reading this with HTML skills!!!!):

1933, 1937, 1938, 1940, 1954, 1956 Preview, 1956, 1956
Torque Flight, 1957, 1958, 1961 AC Supplement, 1966,
1967, 1969, 1970, 1970's Torque Flight, 1971, 1972,
1975, 1982, 1990.


The supplementary series of manuals called MASTER
TECHNICIANS SERVICE CONFRERENCE are shorter, and more
innocuous at only 14 pages each.  They are actually
"almost" a superior source of info to FSM's that a
couple of us have gotten slightly nutty on.  

We think that they could have greater importance than
the FSM's, so we've gone pretty hard and heavy on
them.

We have 75% of them at this point, and there were 12
per year from 1948-1973 at least, so that's "a lot"...

http://imperialclub.com/Repair/Lit/Master/index.htm

If you've not opened the links at the top of the page,
there's some fascinating info there....




So, turning from history to the future:  We'd like to
aquire more material to fill the gaps in the
inventory, since we are rapidly approaching the point
where we have "most" of the stuff and it's just a
matter of doing an inventory of what we're still
missing and then seeking it out.  The 1927 and 1928
Users Manuals are $125 each at a literature vendor,
and I am planning to stump for getting them using the
funds that folks are sending in, since these are the
precursors to FSM's, and we have almost all of the
other ones.  


We must ask for the group's indulgence here on this: 
At some point in the coming 6 months, we plan to do a
survey of what's missing and do hope for assistance
with anything that is collectively laying around in
people's posession, since getting stuff loaned sure
tops tracking it down and purchasing it.  More on that
later.




Meanwhile, I'm almost done here.  Want to apologize
for some strange word phrasing a_ove here - had to
compose the entire message you've just read without
the use of the second letter of the alpha_et since
that key is _roken on my key_oard.  HA!  Made it
tho!!!

 


-Kenyon Wills
Online Imperial Clu_ Volunteer


       
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