Now You Can Buy NASA's Own Original Apollo 11 Moon Landing Footage:
Got a player for 2-inch Quadruplex videotapes sitting around? You could view original NASA recordings of the Apollo 11 moon landing in your living room.
Sotheby's is auctioning off three first-generation tapes of the historic touchdown as part of its July 20 auction of space exploration artifacts set to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.
The tapes run a total of 2 hours and 24 minutes and capture moments including Neil Armstrong declaring, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Also on the tapes are the "long-distance phone call" with President Richard Nixon and the planting of the American flag on the lunar surface.
[...] Gary George, an engineering student and NASA intern, purchased the tapes for $217.77 at a government surplus auction in 1976. It's estimated they'll sell for at least a $1 million at the Sotheby's event.
I was under the impression that the original tapes had been lost or recorded over. Does anyone else remember hearing that? Either way, this is a irreplaceable national treasure and I am astonished at seeing these up for auction. I am hopeful some philanthropist steps up, buys them, perhaps makes a personal copy, and then donates them to the Library of Congress.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 16 2019, @08:36AM
The tape recording's resolution is almost certainly just grotty old NTSC straight off an Ampex, nothing more.
Information content? Mix the pixel clock with Shannon's Law if you desperately want a number, but it will be a mostly meaningless overestimate. You could try to work out what the end to end (camera, transmission, recording, and storage losses) noise ratio is, and plug that into Shannon's Law instead, and that would give you a more meaningful number. Which would tell you only one thing - the digital version of it contains all the useful information on the tape already.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves