Fig. 2. Annual global marine reports (solid curve) for COADS Release 1 through 1949, continued by Release 1b for 1950-79, and by Release 1a for 1980-95 (after removal of certain and uncertain duplicates, and "landlocked" reports). For comparison, the dash/dot curve shows 1950-79 Release 1 and 1980-91 "interim" data. Horizontal lines span the time periods for data that have been collected and digitized (solid), or are partially digitized or proposed for future work (dashed), with the approximate numbers of reports shown in millions (M) or thousands (K) (see Elms et al., 1993). Data additions available from the Maury and U.S. Merchant Marine 1912-46 Collections are shown by the dashed curve. Currently, only 1M merchant marine reports from the Kobe Collection for 1892-1932 are planned for digitization, representing a subset from the 5-6M unkeyed reports (in parentheses). Labeled ticks along the upper horizontal axis mark the starting years for Releases 1a (1980), and 1b (1950) and planned for Releases 1c (1854) and Release 2 (~1820, or earlier).