# The Oldest video footage in existence?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 17, 2000, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836 "2000-07-17T13:37:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Manta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manta)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/1 "2000-07-17T13:37:05Z")
Do you know what the oldest piece of video footage still in existance is? What is it and when and where was it filmed?
---
### Author:  [@metroshane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/metroshane)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/2 "2000-07-17T13:40:38Z")
does it actually have to be video, as opposed to film?
Look for Thomas edison for the first film stuff.
---
### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/3 "2000-07-17T13:47:50Z")
Ampex introduced the videotape recorder in 1956 and CBS first broadcast a videotape program later that year.
[http://www.ampex.com/03corp.html](http://www.ampex.com/03corp.html)
---
### Author:  [@Manta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manta)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/4 "2000-07-17T13:56:01Z")
Sorry should have been more specific. I mean film. Motion picture.
---
### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/5 "2000-07-17T14:28:11Z")
Film? Ok, now you’re in my territory.
Without any reference books handy, there are, I believe, two contenders:
• Edweard Muybridge’s motion studies of models and horses (late 1880s and early 1890s), which still exist.
• Augustin Le Prince’s motion studies of London (mid-1880s), which no longer exist and cannot be verified.
Edison was a Johnny-come-lately, but he was ruthless and had good PR, so most people still think he invented motion pictures.
---
### Author:  [@Inky\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inky_1)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/6 "2000-07-17T15:42:42Z")
If I remember correctly the first primitive video recording was of a hand clenching and unclenching recorded on a metal wire with a device developed by Westinghouse (I suspect in a similar manner as magnetic tape is today).
---
### Author:  [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/7 "2000-07-17T16:52:54Z")
Who thinks Edison invented motion pictures?
From [Encyclopædia Britannica: Les frères Lumière](http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/8/0,5716,50528+1+49338,00.html):
> [@](#):
>
> **Lumière, Auguste and Louis
> Respectively
> b. Oct. 19, 1862, Besançon, Fr.
> d. April 10, 1954, Lyon
> b. Oct. 5, 1864, Besançon
> d. June 6, 1948, Bandol**
> French inventors and pioneer manufacturers of photographic equipment who devised an early motion-picture camera and projector called the Cinématographe (“cinema” is derived from this name). Their film _La Sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière_ (1895; “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”), shown in Paris, is considered the first motion picture.
> (underlining mine)
and [Encyclopædia Britannica: motion-picture technology History](http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/8/0,5716,119928+2+110700,00.html)
> [@](#):
>
> Thomas Edison is often credited with the invention of the motion picture in 1889. The claim is disputable, however, specifically because Edison’s motion-picture operations were entrusted to an assistant, W.K.L. Dickson, and generally because there are several plausible pre-Edison claimants in England and France. Indeed, a U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1902 concluded that Edison had not invented the motion picture but had only combined the discoveries of others.
---
### Author:  [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/8 "2000-07-17T17:04:21Z")
I think people are off on the wrong track, its not motion pictures he’s asking about, its video.
I recently read about how some early video recordings on vinyl records were discovered. It far predates any kinescope or tape recordings. Some scientist was experimenting in recording and distributing video as analog recordings on vinyl records, apparently it worked to a small degree, but was never commercially viable. Recently his recordings were discovered, and were resurrected using digital technology. Its on the web somewhere, I’ll poke around and see if I can dig it up.
---
### Author:  [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/9 "2000-07-17T17:33:45Z")
Since Manta added:
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*Sorry should have been more specific. I mean film. Motion picture. \*\*
it’s pretty clear the OP was referring to film. But the video site **Chas E.** mentions is interesting it its own right, as it includes restorations of recording of very early 30-line TV transmissions, beginning in 1927. See: [The World’s Earliest TV Transmission: Restored!](http://www.dfm.dircon.co.uk/)
---
### Author:  [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/10 "2000-07-17T17:50:47Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Eve \*
> \*\*Film? Ok, now you’re in my territory.
>
> • Edweard Muybridge’s motion studies of models and horses (late 1880s and early 1890s), which still exist.
>
> • Augustin Le Prince’s motion studies of London (mid-1880s), which no longer exist and cannot be verified.
>
> Edison was a Johnny-come-lately, but he was ruthless and had good PR, so most people still think he invented motion pictures. \*\*
Eve- surely these are Library of Congress Paper Transfers. Nitrite never would have made it this long. Hell, standard emulsion base film gets gummy after enough decades.
```
I wonder, if Augustin Le Prince's film studies are stored in London, in their equivalent of our Library of Congress?? Perhaps there is indeed a way to retrieve that "footage".
Another true film lover :)
```
---
### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/11 "2000-07-17T19:02:42Z")
Cartoon—read “The Missing Reel,” a bio of Le Prince. All that exists is a couple of frames of his work, so it can’t be proved.
I imagine that the Muybridge stuff was indeed saved on paper, though, as pretty much all of it still exists.
The Lumiere brothers came after both fellas mentioned above.
---
### Author:  [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/12 "2000-07-17T20:54:38Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Cartooniverse \*
> Eve- surely these are Library of Congress Paper Transfers.
😕 And what, pray tell, would a Library of Congress Paper Transfer be?
---
### Author:  [@stuyguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stuyguy)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/13 "2000-07-17T21:58:23Z")
In the early days of motion pictures, the gov’t had no provision for keeping and copyrighting the films. So the filmmakers made a paper contact print of each frame and copyrighted those images! Ingenious when you think about it.
And oh so luck for us too, because long after the original films were decayed or destroyed, the paper prints still existed. The LOC used the paper prints to “recreate” these otherwise lost early silent, B&W films.
---
### Author:  [@metroshane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/metroshane)
#### Post date: [July 17, 2000, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/14 "2000-07-17T22:05:07Z")
maybe you were curious as to the first motion picture as used for entertainment? I believe that still goes to edison. didn’t he do “the great train robbery”??
Also, I can’t think of the name of it,but isn’t one of the first motion picturs (as used as a medium rather than the entertainment aspect) of the study of the trot of a horse. you know the first flip book=motion picture
---
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2000, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/15 "2000-07-18T00:15:15Z")
I don’t believe Edison was the first filmmaker for entertainment. There was a late 19th century run of very short flicks. They were more for novelty value than plot, but people were as excited about them as we would be about hologram movies.VideoYesteryear (a videotape cmpany) sells a tape purporting to be transfers from the first commercial film program – exciting stuff like a train coming amost at the camera.
Edison DID get into the film biz in a big way, but he didn’t invent a lot of the film things people attribute to him.
---
### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2000, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/16 "2000-07-18T13:08:52Z")
The French were way ahead of us in films; it was only WWI that let the U.S. get ahead of the rest of the world—see Kevin Brownlow’s terrific TV series “Cinema Europe” for background on early silent films in France, England, Sweden, Germany, etc.
“Great Train Robbery” was ONE of the first popular entertainment films in the U.S., though “Life of an American Fireman” came first. Edison was a shark who viewed movies as a money-maker, not as an art form. He ran his competition out of business by forming a Trust around 1909; that’s one reason so many film companies began moving to the West Coast—to get the hell away from Edison!
Edison eventually went out of business because he couldn’t keep any real artsy types working for him; they all went to companies that appreciated them and gave them some creative freedom (and money!), like Biograph, Essanay, Vitagraph and others.
---
### Author:  [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2000, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/17 "2000-07-21T04:04:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by stuyguy \*
> \*\*In the early days of motion pictures, the gov’t had no provision for keeping and copyrighting the films. So the filmmakers made a paper contact print of each frame and copyrighted those images! Ingenious when you think about it.
>
> And oh so luck for us too, because long after the original films were decayed or destroyed, the paper prints still existed. The LOC used the paper prints to “recreate” these otherwise lost early silent, B&W films. \*\*
```
Stuy- you've got it pretty close here :) The Gummint, even then, knew the film was wildly dangerous and (in)flammable. SO- they refused to Copywright Film Prints. Tough going, if you wanted to protect your Intellectual Property. So, they made paper prints. Not one frame at a time, but actually strips. Thank god- can you imagine shooting ONE frame at a TIME? It would be like that scene from "Blowout" by Brian DePalma, where Travolta gamely tries to "film" a series of photographs, to re-created an accident scene. Registration, man....registration !!!!
```
No, these were LOOOON strips of photographic paper, and basically were paper prints of the movies. Thanks, I was afk for a day or so, and you got the basics in just right.
Cartooniverse
---
### Author:  [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2000, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/18 "2000-07-21T04:06:23Z")
LOON strips?? God help me, sorry- LOONG strips of paper. Sheeeesh… ( hiding face in humiliation )
Cartooniverse
---
### Author:  [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2000, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/19 "2000-07-21T04:35:51Z")
… but I can find LOON in my dictionary. LOONG isn’t in there 😃
---
### Author:  [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2000, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836/20 "2000-07-21T16:22:08Z")
Thank you for enlightening me, stuyguy and Cartooniverse. Next time I’m in Washington I’ll go to the library, get me a library card and try to check out some of those films on paper! I figure the copyright on those is probably expired, so if I transfer a few to DVD I can probably make a pretty penny selling them over the Internet.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-oldest-video-footage-in-existence/25836.md?page=2)