Technology Behind the Shield Nickel Viewer

The Shield Nickel Viewer is made possible by the happy convergence of several recent trends in computing:

• Desktop computers of sufficient performance to handle such an application
• The rapid growth of hard disk technology, making multi-gigabyte storage capacity available to everyone
• Readily available, inexpensive CD and DVD burning equipment
• Large displays that make it possible to view SNV photos in detail
• Affordable digital cameras of sufficient quality to take the photos presented in SNV
• Cross-platform program development (Java) that makes SNV available under Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

But the availability of the bulleted items above only make SNV possible, they don't make it a reality. The major steps along the development path included:

• Techniques for taking photographs (see the author's article on Digital Coin Photography)
• The SNV viewer software, which went through many revisions of concept and design
• Support software to package and generate SNV data files
• Integration with a website for downloadable updates
• Documenting the whole process (hopefully without lapsing into too much compuspeak)
• Soliciting and obtaining photographs of coins from collections other than the author's

SNV was developed around Shield Nickels because the author is passionate about the series and because he perceived a need to better document shield nickel varieties in a way that can continue to grow as new varieties are discovered.

A logical question would be "Is this technology applicable to anything other than Shield Nickels?" And the answer is most definitely YES. Relatively minor modifications to the software are needed to track a different series - replacing those elements tracked that are specific to Shield Nickels (example: Missing Leaf varieties) with whatever is required to properly track the desired series. A larger job will be acquisition of the requisite photographs, but that is really not a function of the technology; photographs would need to be taken for any reference.

If another hobbyist is as passionate about his series as the author is about Shield Nickels, he is welcome to contact the author about possible uses of the technology behind the Shield Nickel Viewer.