Working with a scanner producer, the church helped develop high-speed scanners that can scan a roll of microfilm in "a couple of minutes," as opposed to an hour or more that traditional scanners required.

New software developed to process that information into images and make it ready for processing, as well as to manage the warehousing of such huge information banks, also had to be created, Anderson said. "Almost every step of the way, there were significant engineering projects or hardware that needed to be developed."

Now that the technology is in place, the Records Access project will mean "at least 20 billion unique new names that will be in those records (to be posted online), but I'm not uncomfortable saying it could be 80 billion." That's compared with a total of about 5 billion names now online, he said.

The new technology and resulting "affiliate" agreements through FamilySearch will "fundamentally change people's ability to find their ancestors and connect with their families online. It's just going to be a real watershed event," Anderson said.

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E-mail: carrie@desnews.com