I saw this rather odd advertisement atop one of the buildings. Something seemed oddly familiar about it, yet I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Thankfully a grizzled (and slightly imaginary, it must be said) old prospector was sitting on a nearby bench and offered an explanation.

"Y'see that picture box hangin' around your neck?", he said, pointing to my slightly bruised 40D. "Well, folks used to have them back in my day too. But they'd feed something into them called 'film'. And that film came in boxes like that one up there, only smaller."

I looked at him doubtfully, or would have had he been there. "I find that very hard to believe", I replied. Even if you shrink that box down it's likely to be bigger than even one of my compact flash cards, and they're about the largest cards on the market."

"Oh they weren't cards", he went on, "It was some chemicals on a flimsy strip. Came on a roll, y'see. You'd put the roll into the camera. Then when you'd done exposing it, you'd have to send it to a lab where they'd run it through a chemical bath a few times."

And with that, I knew that he was mad and walked away.

The meaning of the box must therefore remain a mystery to all but future archaeologists.