powers, industry and personal example will be greatly missed by his colleagues, who arranged to mark the occasion of Mr. THOMSON'S retirement by entertaining him and Mrs. THOMSON to a Chinese dinner and presenting him with a rosewood cabinet and an electric clock both of his own choice. It was later announced that after his retirement as Registrar General Mr. THOMSON would continue to serve as Chairman of the Companies Law Revision Committee.
Photographic Section
196. The Department has a Photographic Section equipped with a Photostat machine Model 4 Type P, capable of copying plans, docu- ments, registers, etc. up to four feet by three feet in size, a Verifax copier capable of taking up to six foolscap copies from one matrix, and a Rank Xerox 914 Copier for copying documents, etc. up to 9 inches by 14 inches. During the year 2,165 photostat, 570 Verifax and 15,592 Xerox copies of documents, etc. were made. Most of the copies were made for the use of the Department and other Government Depart- ments, but fees were collected in respect of copies of public records supplied to the public.
197. The Department also has a Microfilm Unit which undertakes microfilming work for the various registries and sub-registries. During the previous year the Unit completed the microfilming of all the trade mark certificates of registration, and the system has been kept up to date by microfilming new certificates before they are issued. The film records are mounted on aperture cards and can be read by means of an Archival Reader, which projects an enlarged image on to an illu- minated screen. With the indexing system now in use any trade mark can be located and projected on to the viewing screen in less than ten seconds. Dry positive photo-copies of 84′′ by 11" can be produced on a Viewer-Printer in about six seconds. The Unit also completed the microfilming of more than 126,000 pages of births and deaths regis- tration records. These films are also mounted on aperture cards and indexed to facilitate searching and viewing. Current pages of registration records are microfilmed by a mobile team which makes regular weekly visits to all registries including those in the New Territories. These microfilm records are deposited in the General Register Office, where all records of births and deaths in the Colony are centralized.
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