Compactflash memory card survives blast that destroys camera

Err,

Maybe this isn't quite the right place to put this as it's not really leading edge, nor is it a conspiracy in any way - but it is kinda cool, in a geeky way, so I thought I'd share.

www.sandisk.com...

"Cape Giardeau, MO., August 23, 2004 – When a demolition crew set off an explosion to bring down an old highway bridge on the Mississippi River, newspaper photographer Don Frazier was so close that his hair stood on end. His digital camera, positioned on a tripod at an even closer point to remotely capture the event, fared much worse. It was blown to bits.

But to Frazier’s amazement, there on the ground, inches from the shattered remnants of his new pro-level camera, was his SanDisk® 256MB CompactFlash® card, which he had owned since 1999. Surprisingly, except for a few nicks, it was unscathed, even though it had been blasted from the camera chamber"

And the rest of the article goes on to talk about how and why - but the best bit is the photo of the actual explosion, milliseconds before the camera was dispatched. (ok, I think the best bit is the photo).

I guess I could scrabble at justifying the post, by now talking about any useable tech that came out of this ad-hoc experiment - but then again maybe not, non-volatile memory tech seems to survive pretty well it seems, so perhaps it's nothing new after all ?


(Edit: The pictures are replicated here, but in a much larger format: news.designtechnica.com... ).


[edit on 10-1-2005 by 0951]

Cool pictures. I guess it doesn't really suprise me that the card survived. It was encased in it's own little shield (the camera) which would have taken the brunt of the force, and the card is pretty hard and solid (and small), so it would have been pushed by the exploding force rather than acutely impacted...