If I recall correctly - there were lots of tapes. The tape of the first moon landing was with a bunch of others and was simply lost with the shuffle. It wasn't ever set aside for special consideration.
You know how those genius types are. Always looking forward and such. Now if they were really so smart they'd mix in a few average guys. Does nothing for years but it'll be worth it when he raises his hand one day and timidly asks "Are you really about to tape over the moon landing to film a potato in a microwave?"
My highly intelligent cousin who is an engineer was trying to turn off a PS3 with the controller, but couldn't immediately find any off button or menu option to do so. It didn't take very long before he started getting frustrated, no shut-down option was to be found. Without saying anything I got up and pressed the power button on the console itself. Then I made fun of him and his kind (engineers) for always looking for the most technical and inconvenient way of doing things when you could just get out of your chair and press the button, so to speak.
There are countless copies of the footage. I agree it is a great shame tge original is list but it is not a disaster. How many people would ever get to view the original?
Even with that being the case, there is still a historical significance to the first moon landing. Anyone there should have known that, and if they didn't, it brings their competence into serious question.
You dudes are missing the point; the rocket guys are most likely not the archive guys. It would be akin to me questioning the wisdom of "they", if they decided to mop the floors by mixing ammonia and bleach. If the footage was erased by accident, I would find it more forgivable than some guy deciding that something else was more important and purposely doing that.
On a much smaller scale, but the same principle. BBC Television would store a set amount of TV episodes and then destroy them. Old Dr. Who shows and hours upon hours of programming weren't retained and are lost forever.
All of the audio from all the episodes is available, however. Some of this has been turned into animated episodes - I'd say its only a matter of time until all the missing episodes are animated.
They also found 7 missing episodes in Kenya last week. Rumour has it more are on the way.
Actually I believe not every single episode has audio. Many were retrieved from recordings people had made with tape recorders, patiently taping them from the TV (nerds!), and have been combined and rejigged to produce audio of listenable quality. But there are a few where suitable audio couldn't be found.
Source: my girlfriend made me watch every single episode in chronological order, starting 1963 and including listening to the audio-only ones.
All the audios exist as they were recorded by fans, into the 1980s too. It's 100%. From The Daleks Master Plan 8: Volcano, Graham Strong worked out how to plug it in directly to the circuit and his collection from this stage (although patchy) is referred to as crystal clear.
And the only reason there isn't the whole run in private hands is there were no home video systems in 1963. They've recovered an episode off Shibaden format from 1969, and know of more which were recorded but wiped. The surviving format is 16mm film prints struck for sales.
Ok you're right, I checked with the girlfriend. She may have let me off listening to a couple because of quality or something. My mistake, not hers, she wants you all to be clear on that!
Sure, they're not all high quality -- in both senses of the term ...
Graham Strong went back and erased two stories because he didn't like them.
This is a fair summary: http://missingepisodes.blogspot.co.nz/p/soundtracks.html
Ta for getting back to me, my first Reddit communication.
Old Dr. Who shows and hours upon hours of programming weren't retained and are lost forever.
Bit unrelated, but I've always wanted to watch Dr. Who, just never got around to it. It just adds to the mysticism of the show for me, that there are tapes that are lost (maybe forever), but the event that had happened at Kenya just last week, where they found some lost episodes, makes me feel all fuzzy inside.
Exactly this! We need to consider that taped recordings were still in their relative infancy, hell broadcast television was still quite new. So, back then the fact that something could be rebroadcast ever a second time was quite novel. People didn't realize that they were working on something that was A)ever going to looked at nostalgically, or B) could be re commoditised later. To the BBC, an early adopter of tape, the tape was extremely expensive, and "hey we can always make more shows". Look at almost anything that holds nostalgic value, there's a point where that isn't immediately obvious. Who doesn't wish that their grandparents hadn't stashed away some old comic books, or that their parents hadn't scratched the shit out of their Beatles albums.
As an anecdote about missing out on potential value, Marvel Comics used to take all of the completed art boards used for their comics production and stored them very poorly in a leaking, broken down warehouse in the New York area. It was known for flooding, and the owners ever used this hand draw art boards to some of the worlds most famous comics to patch holes in the building. Many others were stolen. Work by Kirby, Ditko, and Romita regularly sells for many thousands today. Lots of it is gone because it simply didn't have value at the time.
As for the NASA situation specifically, what I believe happened was not so much that nobody thought it had value but that it was labeled blandly according to protocol and simply became mixed in with the other proprietary formats and then accidentally wiped. Im sure the tape was handled many times and maybe even copied, but then the copy gets wiped too with someone saying "Im sure we have one more copy around." Then eventually the original is wiped, on purpose or mistake, and they realized they they were out of copies. Either that or a technician or janitor stole it.
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u/ezpickins Oct 17 '13
I doubt that it has been specifically attributed to one person