From: Adam Hyman (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Jul 17 2009 - 09:17:07 PDT
There was a more detailed story on it today. It appears that at some point
in the 1970s or 1980s they needed more tapes, so to save money the reused
upwards of 200,000 of the tapes that were lying around (from more missions
than just Apollo 11), and they are quite sure that the original moon landing
tapes were tapes over.
Also, the tapes contained much of the data being sent at the same time, and
once the data was transferred, they weren¹t seen as being so important.
So Lowry Digital in Burbank is doing some digital restoration on various
dubs and broadcasts of the events. The originals are gone though.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090716/ap_on_sc/us_sci_moon_video;_ylt=Aoe9cduD
d.GE3IUmtQs3Rvx0fNdF
On 7/17/09 8:17 AM, "Dinorah de Jesús Rodriguez" <email suppressed>
wrote:
> truly. you'd think that the same culture that can keep Walt Disney on ice for
> over half a century could figure out where to store videotapes.... have they
> looked on ebay?
>
>
> enjoy today...
>
> Dinorah de Jesús Rodríguez
> Film/Video Artist and Freelance Writer
>
> www.solislandmediaworks.com <http://web.mac.com/sol.island/iWeb/>
> <http://artcinematic.blogspot.com/>
> www.artcinematic.blogspot.com <http://artcinematic.blogspot.com/>
> http://cinesthesia.blip.tv <http://cinesthesia.blip.tv/>
>
>
> On Jul 17, 2009, at 10:50 AM, Tom B Whiteside wrote:
>
>>
>> This program sounds wonderful. And speaking of Time and Space, is it not
>> downright astonishing that NASA seems to have lost the original videotapes of
>> the first moon landing? They had developed a high resolution video format for
>> that mission, what we saw on television was a downgraded version.... but now
>> 40 years later they no longer have the originals, they were probably erased
>> and recorded over. That unique video format would have been somewhat
>> equivalent to Hi-Def today (or so I've heard). BTW, the recorder is still up
>> there, I would love to have it for my collection and will pay good money to
>> anyone who can fetch it.
>>
>> The watercolors painted by Englishman John White 420 years ago on his visit
>> to Roanoke Island in the "New World" still exist, they are in the British
>> Museum. But 40 year old videotapes......... let's see, now where did I put
>> those things? White's paintings were translated into engravings and published
>> in 1590 and have pretty much been in print ever since that time - but the
>> engravings were made by someone who never set foot in the Western Hemisphere,
>> details were changed considerably. It is very helpful to also have the
>> originals, they were painted on location. For example, I recall subsequent
>> versions of the moon landing in which the astronaut was flying a flag for
>> MTV, which I do believe is an anachronism ........
>>
>> I remember watching the moon landing on tv, the first shot of Armstrong's
>> descent of the ladder was (briefly) upside down. Made sense to me, the moon
>> was "up there" you know, maybe everything was upside down. I was only a kid,
>> but perhaps that moment planted the seed for my becoming an experimental
>> filmmaker.
>>
- Tom Whiteside Durham, North Carolina
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.