media archaeology – the Venus transit of 1882 – a return of what never was

Boing Boing: Collaboration across 120 years yields “oldest” movie ever

The article is in Sky and Telescope. In 1882 David Peck Todd photographed a transit of Venus in California. Two astronomers have found the 147 negatives archived at Lick Observatory, just down the road here, and have turned them into a Quicktime movie.

Another kind of reanimated past. A return of what never was.

Todd's transit of Venus

As Mike Pearson and I defined it – theatre/archaeology – the re-articulation of fragments of the past as real-time event.

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