NASA Intern accidentally bought the original lunar video
Original videos of the first ever extravehicular activity of astronauts on the moon will be sold at auction for millions of dollars. NASA's trainee technician accidentally bought them along with a lot of used films forty years ago and for a long time had no idea what treasure he kept at home.
In 1976, Gary George bought 1150 cassettes and reels of various films and magnetic tapes at a government auction for a little over $ 200 (taking into account inflation in 2019, this is more than $ 1,200). At the Ellington base of the US air force in Houston NASA sold off the excess property and among the lots were carriers of information that according to employees no longer represented value. Gary's attention was drawn to 65 boxes of high-quality Ampex film, each of which cost $ 260. He decided to resell them for reuse to TV studios and thus earn a much larger amount than he paid for the entire purchase. Fortunately, his father noticed three reels of magnetic tape signed as "APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969". Since the equipment for viewing them was very difficult to find, the records were simply kept in the family of George "just in case" for many years.
The turning point came in 2008, when NASA was looking for the originals of the lost records to restore the chronicle in high quality to the fortieth anniversary of the landing on the moon. At that time, Gary was unable to agree with the Agency on the conditions for the transfer of archival materials and decided to study the reels. With great difficulty he was able to find a way to view them and, most likely, for the first time since the shooting of the film was played at the California Studio DC Video specialist in archive videos by David Crostata. Magnetic tapes were in excellent condition and in the same year they were digitized without loss of quality. Terabyte hard drive with this digital copy will be part of the lot, which "Sotheby's" put up for auction in the half-century anniversary of "Apollo 11" July 20, 2019 at an initial price of 700 thousand dollars. Experts of the auction house confirmed that the records are authentic and estimated them at 1-2 million dollars.
This amazing story shows how easily 50 years can be lost and then found evidence of even the most important historical events. Because media in the 1970s were expensive, they were often reused, sold, and re-recorded. However, the high cost was known only to specialists who worked with them. Perhaps for the sale of unnecessary property responsible employees who did not imagine the value of all the lots and considered them just extra stuff on the balance sheet of NASA.