His task is only getting harder. Scientists who collaborate via email, Google (GOOG), YouTube, Flickr and Facebook are leaving fewer paper trails, while the information technologies that do document their accomplishments can be incomprehensible to other researchers and historians trying to read them.

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“Lately Silicon Graphics Inc. has had the kind of upward momentum associated with the hit movies produced with its whizzy high-powered work stations, like ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ and ‘Jurassic Park.’ After the company outperformed Wall Street’s earnings estimates last week and the stock jumped 15 percent, analysts scrambled to upgrade ratings and future earnings forecasts.”

– Silicon Graphics’ Hot Run Goes On, New York Times, 1994

Time was, there was a Silicon Graphics (SGIC) workstation on every desk in computationally-intense industries like chemistry and film production. No longer. Cheap Linux boxes have rendered them obsolete and SGI, the company, along with them. This morning, SGI, which recently endured a brace of layoffs, filed for bankruptcy protection for a second time and sold itself to Rackable Systems, which makes server and storage products for midsize and large data centers, for $25 million in cash.

“We have been working very hard to strengthen our company, and today, we’ve taken another big step in that direction,” SGI CEO Robert Ewald said in a statement that would make even the most exuberant of SGI-optimists wince. “This transaction represents a compelling opportunity for Silicon Graphics’ customers, partners and employees, who can all benefit from the emerging stronger company with better technologies, products and markets [sic] reach.”

A sad ending for SGI, which really reinvented computer graphics and made quite a name for itself in the high-performance computing space back in the day.