Make your last preservation decision.
Archivists are mandated to preserve permanent records forever, but every medium expires. Digital demands migration every 5 to 10 years. Microfilm tops out at LE-500, and only in a climate-controlled vault. NanoFiche is the first preservation master that reaches a terminal state: engraved in noble nickel, readable with simple magnification.
“Preserve forever” has never been achievable
Professional archivists are tasked with something structurally impossible in the digital world: they are asked to preserve records permanently, but every tool they have comes with an expiration date. They know with professional certainty that whatever they put into digital storage today will require migration, intervention, and risk again in 10–20 years. And again after that. Forever.
NanoFiche lets an archivist make a preservation decision for a medium that does not need to be migrated. It reaches a terminal state, where the record is no longer a recurring responsibility — turning preserve forever from an impossible aspiration into an achievable outcome.
| Digital | Microfiche | NanoFiche | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Migration required | Every 5–10 yrs | No | No |
| Rated lifetime | Media-dependent | LE-500 | Geologic |
| Climate-controlled vault | Recommended | Required | Not required |
| Readable without electronics | No | Yes | Yes |
| Recurring cost | Perpetual | Storage | None |
| 1,000,000 pages over 50 years | $3,000,000 | $750,000 | $260,000 |
Total cost of ownership for a one-million-page collection held for fifty years, including migration cycles, media replacement, and storage conditioning.
Dual output: accessibility and permanence
Every project produces two deliverables — a digital master for daily access, and a physical nickel plate that solves permanence. The digital viewer solves the accessibility problem; the physical NanoFiche solves the permanency problem.
Convert
Analog pages are converted to digital pages.
Engrave
100,000 dpi analog engraving onto a nickel plate. One thousand pages fits on a dime.
Digital master
A zoomable master file viewer is generated, with all pages viewable at once.
Recover
If digital storage is lost or unreadable, scan the nickel plate back to digital and parse it into PDF.
Archival discs
Larger collections and custom formats are quoted individually. Ask us about volume archiving for institutional holdings.
Where NanoFiche is today
- Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC
- Draper Museum, Cambridge
- MoonShot Museum, Pittsburgh PA
- America 250 Time Vault, Philadelphia PA
- Arizona Time Vault, Mesa AZ
- Argentina Time Vault, made for Norsam, Santa Fe NM
- Adzom Rinpoche Monastery, Kathmandu, Nepal
- Archives of the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem
- Long Now Rosetta Project, San Francisco CA
- Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY
- The Moon
Lunar mission archives include SpaceIL Beresheet, Astrobotic Peregrine 1, Firefly Blue Ghost, Intuitive Machines Odysseus, ispace Resilience, and Astrobotic Griffin-1. Griffin-1 launches Q4 2026 on SpaceX Falcon.
Built for records that cannot be lost
Space
Radiation-resistant, maintenance-free archival storage on durable nickel. No power, electronics, or software required — ideal for long-duration missions. Readable by magnification for centuries even if all electronic systems fail.
Genealogical
A permanent home for family records, photographs, and documents. Content resists degradation and needs no migration or special technology, protecting family history from digital obsolescence for centuries.
Religious
Sacred texts and doctrinal records preserved on durable nickel plates. Readable by simple magnification for centuries, supporting faithful stewardship without recurring cost or obsolescence risk.
Government
Permanent preservation of public records, reducing long-term storage and migration costs while providing resilience against disasters, cyber threats, and technological obsolescence.
The William E. Warfield Diaries
William E. Warfield was Fort Wayne, Indiana’s first prominent Black real estate investor. His personal diaries and journals, spanning 1909 to 1936, meticulously document the social issues, business finances, and daily life of the Black community.
The first eight books have been archived on NanoFiche for the National Genealogical Society, held at the Allen County Public Library system.
See it explained
Video links require an internet connection. Everything else on this page works offline.
Talk to us about your collection
Tell us what you need preserved and the volume involved, and we will scope the engraving and the digital master together.