Brief Review of Methods and Resources Used in Creating the
Moth History Site

Five equipment sources were used:

• University of Massachusetts:
• Ethernet, Internet and PPP connection software and hardware:
  Credit must be given to our University's Office of Information Technology which has provided us with the modern infrastructure of information transfer.
• Biology Department:
• Morrill Science Center Ethernet System:
  Credit is accorded to Dean Fred Byron for early recognition of the coming importance of the Internet to science departments in general. With his encouragement, starting in 1987, a building-wide Ethernet system was established under the invaluable management of our electronics specialist, George Drake. In 1988, again with the active intervention of Dean Byron, our Morrill Science Ethernet was connected to the University Computer Center's Ethernet (then about 3 years in existence) and we obtained our link to the Internet! As a result of efforts by these two figures, the science departments in our local have had an enormous headstart in the field of information transfer.
• Biology Department Computer:
  Administered by George Drake, this SPARCstation 10 has served as our mail and WWW Server as well as main file server for the Biology Department. This computer also provides a site at which files can be archived onto tape for backup and long term storage.
• Biological Computer Resource Center:
  Funded by a Howard Hughes grant this center provides an enrichment of technical resources for the educational and research use of the Biological Sciences which include:
• a SPARCstation 20 with Web Server.
• a Power Macintosh 8100/100AV with attached SprintScan 35 and Polaroid HR 6000 Slide Printer.
• 2 Power Macintosh 7100/80 with attached UMAX Vista-S8 flatbed scanner.
• an array of 20 Ethernet linked Power Macintosh 7100/80's in a classroom setting.
• a Kodak DC10 Digital Camera
• Kunkel Laboratory Etherneted PCs:
• ACI Pentium Pro 200 MHz 64Mb RAM, with ATI Graphics Pro Turbo true color video card.
• 80486 DX2 66Mhz PC with Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 Video Board, 8Mb RAM. (Funded by the Biotechnology Program)
• 80486 33 MHz PC, Weitek coprocessor, 4Mb RAM, with ComputerEyes/1024 frame grabber. (Contributed by Applicable Electronics)
• 80386DX 33 MHz PC, Weitek coprocessor, 4Mb RAM, with Matrox PIP 640 frame grabber.
• 4 Gigabyte disc mounted on the Departmental SPARCstation and accessed by the Kunkel laboratory computers via Network File Sharing.
• Kunkel Personal Equipment brought to bear:
• Apple QuickTake 100 Digital Camera.
• Pentium 120 MHz PC, 16Mb RAM, 28.8bps modem and PPP connection.
• Sargent Laboratory:
• A Robinson Trap for attracting and catching modern representatives of the moths described at this site.
• A research collection of moths, with particular emphasis on the Catocala.
• A personal collection of photographic slides of moths taken by H. Vermes.

Three types of images are used at this site:

• Apple QuickTake 100 Digital Camera Images:
  Direct digital images (640x480) were taken with close-up lenses of mounted specimens in our laboratory or from plates in our Library's Special Collections and ported directly to a Pentium based PC using Apple Quicktake Software and saved as high resolution JPEGS. The JPEGS were further processed in Photo Shop 3.0 for Windows or Photo Shop 3.0 for Win 95 which conveniently can deal with long file names. In order to display comparable views of moth's wings, some images were electronicly reflected, providing a mirror image of the original.
• Sprintscan Slide Scanner
  Images were scanned from slides or negatives at 600 dpi, saved as high resolution JPEG format images and edited in Adobe Photo Shop before porting to our Web Site on a Sun SPARCStation 10.
• UMAX Vista S8 flatbed Scanner
  Images were scanned at 300 or 600 dpi by reflectance in full color from originals, saved briefly in native file form and subsequently cut, edited and resized within Adobe Photo Shop before porting to our Web Site. Most images were adjusted for color, brightness and contrast using Paint Shop Pro 3.0 optimizing viewing with Netscape on several platforms. Typically images scanned from old published plates have a yellow caste and needed about a 10% enhancement of blue in RGB adjust mode and a 10% enhancement in both brightness and contrast in order to be properly viewed via Netscape.

Two types of text are used at this site:

• Manually Entered Hypertext Markup Language (HTML):
  A variety of editors have been used since the inception of this site to manually enter text into HTML files, including MsWord Internet Assistant, Excel HTML Wizard, Netscape Gold 3.0 beta(s) all working on a 130 MHz Pentium with Win95. On the SPARCstation, in a unix setting, editing has been done directly using the vi editor.
• Automated Optical Character Read Text:
  Text from classic works on moth taxonomy and phylogeny were scanned at the Biological Computer Resource Center using the UMAX Vista S8 flatbed scanner at 600 dpi by reflectance in 256 grey scale. Text images were rotated to be orthogonal to the page axes using Adobe Photo Shop and reduced to 150 dpi low quality JPEG for porting to a SPARCstation directory. The JPEGS were further reduced to 1 bit PCX format using Paint Shop Pro 3.0 running on a 486 66Mhz PC under Windows 3.1 and after ZIP compression transfered by FTP via a PPP conecton to a 130 MHz Pentium with 16 Mb RAM for Optical Character Reading using TypeReader Pro 3.0XA. OCR processing on a computer with smaller memory (8Mb RAM) was found to be unreliable. Initial corrections of character recognition errors were done most efficiently within the TypeReader Pro environment. The output from the OCR process was a Rich Text Format (RTF) file which was further processed and formatted in MsWord 7.0 working under Win95. In the absence of Internet assistant for MsWord 7.0 the text was formated as ascii text with line breaks and that text was copied into an HTML shell using cut and paste methods in the Win95 environment. Some spelling errors in the original text were corrected to facilitate effective searching of the text. Original capitalization and character formating were followed where possible in HTML. The graphic symbols for male and female were replaced with 'm.' and 'f.'. Unavailable footnote symbols were replace with convenient alternates from HTML.

Three intellectual resources contributed to this site:

• Ted Sargent, Professor, has contributed his professional experience with the genus Catocala and provided access to his professional specimens and collection of 35mm slides, taken by Harold Vermes and Sargent himself, from which digital images were obtained for this site. His notations about the species, text and illustrations at this site form a modern commentary on the historical and modern material.
• The University of Massachusetts Library system was developed originally around the Massachusetts Agricultural College. The purchase of the early publications on moth taxonomy and phylogeny were done at a time when the cataloging of the worlds biota were a major occupation of the biological professionals. We are indebted to the care with which these resources have been maintained to the present. Ute Bargman of the Library Special Collections and Larry Feldman of the Biological Sciences Library have been invaluable links into this resource.
• Professor Joe Kunkel's interest in pattern formation and in particular the evolution of wing vein patterns has resulted in an attempt to understand the diversity of the speciose Catocala genus as a member of the subfamily Catocalinae and the family Noctuidae. He has led this attempt to view the history of the illustration, systematics and phylogeny of the Catocala.