(#@#a sheet of microfilm displaying at the top a title or code readable with the naked eye)!@@

The earliest large-scale commercial use of greatly reduced-size copying onto narrow rolls of film (microfilm) resulted from the introduction of the Recordak system by the Eastman Kodak Company in 1928. Continuous, automatic cameras photographed documents on 16-millimetre film, and the first use was for copying checks in bank transit or clearing work. But it soon spread to a great variety of other applications in business, government, and education; and 35-millimetre film was used as well as 16-millimetre.

The science of microphotography burgeoned in the late 20th century, with scores of processes and a variety of miniaturizations being introduced. Generally speaking, a microform may be in the form of continuous media, such as roll or cartridge microfilm, or in that of individual and physically separate records, such as film chips (microfilm containing coded microimages, to be used in automatic retrieval systems) or microfiche (a sheet of microfilm displaying at the top a title or code readable with the naked eye). Use of the microform permits considerable space saving. The microform usually utilizes photographic techniques; however, other methods such as video magnetic tape recording have been used. Most microform techniques also permit the document file to be duplicated easily for dissemination or filing in different places.