One exciting aspect of studying history is that feeling of discovery when you find new information. Often it takes months of painstaking exploration of old dusty journals that are buried in the basement of a library, or archives. Or it can be simply a matter of luck like finding a map attached to the back of an old frame, or in the case locally a few years back, an original copy of the Declaration of Independence.

When I was in college, my friends knew they could find me down in the stacks at the library. Instead of using the card catalog, I would remove a journal and go through each table of contents. I never trusted card catalogs. I trust digital ones even less. I believe in serendipity - dictionary defined as "The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident."

But what about historians of the future? How will they deal with all this wealth of information, so much of it now in digital form, sanitized, and easily available? I love technology, but it doesn't work for everything! Case in point.

Patent Records in Washington D.C. have being digitized since 1971. After digitizing the paper copy is tossed in the garbage! The Patent Office says it doesn't have enough room to warehouse the paper. That may not seem like a problem to you except for the little fact that the ones being tossed are different from the ones being scanned!

There are two sets of patent records kept. One is for the general public to use, and a set that the patent examiners and other researchers use.

The ones that are being tossed are often covered with annotated notes, hand colored areas highlighting a part, or other information the examiners thought was important. These are of extreme value to historians, but are not being scanned, just tossed. Only the other unmarked digital copy is saved. There are 3 1/2 million patents prior to 1971 and any additional information on them is in danger of being destroyed forever. That means half of the present total of 6.3 million patents.

What is really sad is there is no excuse for the Patent Office. The office is financially supported by the very people who pay the patent fees, but guess what. Our federal government has been tapping into their money for use in the general fund, the same one that goes to pay for bombs, subsidies, bail outs, you know the drill. If the politicians would keep their hands out of the till, things would be fine. Incidentally, one reporter recently pulled an original Thomas Edison patent out of the dumpster.

I was thinking how exciting it must have been when Henry Hudson sailed up to the Troy area some 393 years ago in 1609! Not only did he find that the area was occupied by Native people, but there was an abundance of plants and animals and many picturesque views and new discoveries. If you read his writings, and those of his crew, they were awed but what they found.

Can you imagine what it would have been like if they had "OnStar," the GPS technology instead? Here's an imaginary conversation:

HUDSON: Pushes OnStar button

ONSTAR: Hello, Mr. Hudson. We hope you are having a great day.

HUDSON: Thanks, ah, I'm a little lost here. My compass says I'm travelling north but this large stream seems to be getting a bit narrow?

ONSTAR: Oh yes, let's see Mr. Hudson, make a slight left at the next sandbar. Be careful though it seems to be a bit shallow for about 1/4 mile. No other roadblocks though for a few fathoms.

HUDSON: Ah, thanks, but I noticed some small villages and semi naked people along the shore. I thought this was uninhabited, unclaimed land?

ONSTAR: Well, Mr. Hudson, according to our database, these people have been living there for several thousand years, so it's not undiscovered nor unclaimed.

HUDSON: Well, one of our members in our exploring party just came back with an arrow in his heart? That's not good!

ONSTAR: So Sorry, Mr. Hudson. We forgot to tell you that not all the native people in the region enjoy visitors.

HUDSON: Well we can't go any further, it's too shallow. We have to turn around and go back now. What good is your service. I thought you could guide us to the Northwest Passage?

ONSTAR: Northwest Passage? Northwest Passage? What's that? I'm so sorry, Mr. Hudson, we don't have anything like that in our database.

Heritage on the Hudson appears every Tuesday in the Troy Record.