Today marks the 40th anniversary of NASA’s historic Apollo 11 mission, which landed a man on the moon for the first time. Over the years the footage of Neil Armstrong putting his foot down on the lunar surface has been played over and over. I personally have probably seen it at least 100 times. That is why I was surprised and even shocked this weekend when I learned that the original footage of this historic moment no longer exists. According to NASA the tape containing the footage of the mission was accidentally reused, recording something else over the historic footage and losing it forever.
This type of accidental re-recording is something we see at ScanDigital fairly regularly when processing our video to DVD orders. The dance recital with 5 minutes of Michael Jordan in the NBA Playoffs or worse, the wedding footage with half the tape gone because someone’s husband hastily recorded the Superbowl over the second half of the reception video. But I never expected a similar goof could have destroyed footage with such historical significance.
Luckily, not all footage has been lost. On the day of the Apollo 11 landing, more than 600 million people around the world watched as the United States landed a man on the moon and listened to Neil Armstrong’s famous words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Due to 1960s quality, the footage fed back to NASA lost about 30-40% of its quality during the process to distribute it out to the news and media. Because the moment was so spectacular and mesmerizing, no one really knew what they were missing. Today, the remaining footage is from news stations or from people at NASA who filmed the footage as it played on a television screen creating a copy, but the original, crisper version seems to have been lost forever.
It is truly unfortunate that the higher quality version is gone and this is another reminder of how vulnerable film and video is to loss. Even though your own personal footage may not carry the same historic relevance as the moon landing, they’re important and need to be preserved for future generations. As always, we encourage people avoid the same fate of those NASA tapes by digging out those old reels and videotapes and have them converted to digital.
Here is some of the existing footage:
