In one of the greatest  losses of information in human history, eclipsed only by the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, it seems that the original tapes containing recordings of the unconverted vide0 from the Apollo-11 mission have most likely been destroyed.   This probably occurred sometime in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s, although it has not been specifically confirmed that all copies were degaussed at the time, it is known that many tapes in the collection from the era were.

At this time, there remains a very slim chance that there may be some of the original M22 tapes, most likely the on-site duplicates, that may have escaped degaussing and are hidden away somewhere in the US, Guam or Australia.  Although, that seems at best, a very long shot.   More likely to have survived was at least one recording, a possibly two made at the Parkes observatory on a modified  Ampex VR-660 video tape recorder.   If this tape exists, it is most likely in the archives of either the US government or the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. However, thus far, efforts to locate these tapes has also proven fruitless.

There is, however, another potential source of at least some of the information lost during the scan conversion process, which could be of use in the efforts to restore the video recordings, or which at least could provide some additional record for posterity:  Still images.

When Apollo-11 landed on the surface of the moon and began its television transmissions, the historic nature of the event was not lost on the staff of the reception stations.  Many of the workers at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek, Parkes, Guam, Tidbinbilla, Carnarvon or other stations that received the television transmissions may have taken their own personal cameras to work on that day to document the historic events that they were going to be part of.   They may have taken photographs of the monitors showing the unconverted SSTV images.   Indeed, we do know of at least a few examples of this.   There were also images taken of the scan converter monitor that were of lesser quality, but still superior to the broadcast recordings.   In one case, a super-8 movie was discovered, which was taken by Ed von Renouard at the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station and includes footage of the unconverted video as seen on the monitors of Honeysuckle Creek.

While any photographs taken by staff members would potentially preserve much higher quality images than the existing post-conversion video recordings, there is yet another source of images that could prove even better.   During the EVA, a public relations staff member was located at the Goldstone station and equipped with a Polaroid camera for use in photographic an SSTV monitor.   In the years prior to digitization of images and instrumentation, Polaroid produced a number of cameras designed for photographing CRT displays, such as oscilloscopes or video monitors as a means of saving still images.    These cameras were purpose built to fit over the CRT and produce an image that is taken at a direct angle and in focus.

From the Honeysuckle Creek Website:

Bill Wood, who was lead USB engineer at Goldstone, writes,

“During Apollo 11, Goddard Space Flight Center had a public relations person assigned to us. He was given a small office trailer to use just outside the operations building. It had a Fairchild Slow Scan monitor rack that was equipped with a Polaroid camera that used a 4 by 5 inch sheet film back.

He made 100s of pictures during the EVA handing them out the few press representatives that managed the long trip into the desert to Goldstone. I talked the guy out of this one as a keep-sake. Unfortunately that is the only one from Goldstone that I know of.”

Thus we can be sure that there were indeed hundreds of still images taken of the monitor at Goldstone.   These photos may have ended up in the hands of news organizations, reporters, NASA staff members, Westinghouse staff members, astronauts, family members, friends or others.   Today they could be anywhere, from family photo albums to dusty boxes in someone’s attic.

At this moment, only one of these photos is known to exist.

Credit for the above picture goes to Bill Wood, who, in addition to providing this photo, has dedicated a great deal of his own time and energy to the effort to determine the fate of the Apollo-11 recordings and to secure the best possible images and recordings of the video from a variety of sources all around the world.  Thanks to people like Mr. Wood, we will at least be able to see an improved version of the Apollo-11 video recovered from numerous kinescope and video tape recordings.

Do you know of any?   If you remember seeing a photo like this in your uncle’s filing cabinet or your father’s desk, or if you know someone who worked for the space program and may have received one of these, there could be cold hard cash in it for you.

Here are the rules and requirements:

• The photo must be pre-scan conversion
• It must show a frame of the broadcast that is previously unavailable and/or unknown
• It must be in reasonably good condition
• It must show all or very nearly of the frame and must be reasonably close to the monitor and on more than a slight angle
• You don’t have to give up the photo itself, I just want a high resolution scan
• I will judge what constitutes “good condition” and “a slight angle” and I reserve the right not to pay for the photo if it is not acceptable.
• If you have a film or multiple consecutive photos, this would be especially desired, but I can’t pay for each frame of a film, so we’ll have to work out some kind of fair arrangement.

To make this fair and protect anyone who may have an image from sending it only to be denied, you may send a low resolution scan or a water-marked scan to have the photo evaluated before paid.   You will be paid within ten days by money order.  If an alternative means of paying can that is mutually acceptable such as credit card transaction or direct cash payment, if you are close enough, that may be substituted for money order.

Final note:   On the issue of copyrights and intellectual property – as these events were part of a US government program and one that was recorded by the US government for distribution, it is my contention that these photographs are public domain images and can be freely distributed.  However, if you have one of these images and want to assert that you have ownership of the individual image, then I suppose that’s your right.   Please do not hold our history hostage.  If I buy the image scan, I have every intention of distributing it freely.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Announcements, Good Science, History, Misc, Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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