Beschreibung:

APOLLO 11Original, first-generation NASA videotape recordings of the Apollo 11 lunar EVA Three metal reels (each 10 1/2 in. diameter) of Ampex 148 High Band 2-inch Quadruplex videotape, the tapes with video of the Apollo 11 lunar EVA recorded on 20 July 1969 at Mission Control, Manned Spaceflight Center, Houston, Texas, directly from narrow-band slow scan videotape converted to NTSC for network broadcast using Ampex VR-2000 video recorders. The three tapes with running times of 45:04, 49:00, and 50:15 minutes, respectively, covering virtually the entire period of the EVA and including about 9 minutes at the beginning of reel 1 of Mission Control waiting for the lunar-surface camera to be be deployed; the audio quality of all of the tapes is excellent. Each reel of videotape is housed in its original red-and-black manufacturer's box with hinged lid (11 3/8 x 11 3/8 x 2 3/4 in.), the boxes also with printed adhesive labels reading “APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969 REEL 1 [–3]” and “VR2000 525 Hi Band 15 ips.” Each videotape also bears matching serial code labels on both the box and the metal reel: "133335–219" (reel 1), "134951–47" (reel 2), "134088–17" (reel 3). THE EARLIEST, SHARPEST, AND MOST ACCURATE SURVIVING VIDEO IMAGES OF MAN’S FIRST STEPS ON THE MOON: ORIGINAL NASA VIDEOTAPE RECORDINGS OF THE APOLLO 11 LUNAR EVA —UNRESTORED, UNENHANCED, AND UNREMASTERED. This primary witness to mankind’s greatest technological achievement was inadvertently rescued by an engineering student from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, from the destruction visited upon the slow-scan videotapes of the historic first moon walk and preserved ever since. Viewed only three times since June 1976 (perhaps the only times since they were first recorded late in the evening on 20 July 1969 at NASA’s Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas), these three reels of 2-inch Quadruplex videotape justify a statement made during the mission by Capsule Communicator Charlie Duke to Apollo Command Module Pilot Michael Collins Duke had told Collins, who was aboard Columbia in lunar orbit, that he was just about the only person in the world without television coverage of his crewmates’ planting of the United States flag on the moon. In response, Collins asked, “How is the quality of the TV?” “Oh,” replied the CAPCOM, “it’s beautiful, Mike, it really is.” If these videotapes do not quite transport viewers to the lunar surface with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, they certainly put you in front of the big screen monitor at Mission Control on the evening of 20 July 1969, with images clearer and with better contrast than those that the more than half-billion-person television audience saw on their home sets. Home viewers watched video that had been transmitted over a 1,600-mile relay of microwave transmission towers to the major television networks in New York City, with each transfer causing a bit of deterioration to the picture quality. In contrast, Mission Control saw the same video that is on these 2-inch quad videotapes: moving pictures sent directly to Houston from closed circuit TV transmissions from the lunar surface beamed to 64-meter-diameter radio telescopes at the Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek Observatories in New South Wales and Canberra, Australia, respectively, and NASA’s own similar-sized antenna in Goldstone, California. This direct transmission originated from a Westinghouse TV camera that NASA had commissioned specifically to transmit images back to Earth from the lunar surface. Since the camera had to be deployed before Armstrong and Aldrin exited the Lunar Lander if it was truly going to capture their first steps on the surface of the moon, the camera was stowed in a shock-proof and insulated mount on the Lunar Landing Module’s (LM) Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA). Armstrong released the MESA when he first peered out of the Lunar Module, so that the camera would be in position to capture his slow descent down the ladder and onto the lunar