6 ms·

100-year-old negatives discovered in Antarctic (2013)

125 points by voidlogic 12y ago

Sonicmouse 12y ago
Old news: 100-Year-Old Negatives Discovered in Block of Ice in Antarctica Posted by katie hosmer on December 30, 2013 at 10:00am
- mkoryak 12y ago
  Your post would have been better if it read: Old news: Negatives Discovered in Block of Ice in Antarctica Posted by katie hosmer on December 30, 1913 at 10:00am
  - Sonicmouse 12y ago
    What I get down-voted because this was posted on HN 6 months ago and I was just letting everyone know? Maybe I should start posting news stories that Steve Jobs has just passed away. C'mon HN.
    - bsilvereagle 12y ago
      I think the community as a whole realizes that lots of good posts never make it past /new and don't particularly mind "old" news that is interesting making it up to the front page 6 months later.
    - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
      I think they downvoted you because you're not suppose to question the selection of submissions. It adds nothing to the conversation. If it's on the front page, then people like it enough for it to be there. I learned things like that the hard way. Also, HN has a strange hive mind. Saying the same thing in two different posts can get you downvoted in one and upvoted in the other.
    - logicallee 12y ago
      you could have linked the original and done us a service instead of just bitching. That said your comment on it's own is not that out of line. However as a user with no prior karma (-4) you are not really adding to the conversation. I would start with more constructive posts and comments and then feel free to post certain neutral ones like this later.
      - Gravityloss 12y ago
        What does the karma have to do with the post content? I agree about the link though.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
cskau 12y ago
Aw darn, I read 'natives' at first. Photos turning out not nearly as exciting as I had expected..
philosophus 12y ago
Are there better quality images anywhere? On the Antartic Heritage Trust site it's just a crappy Flash slide show. Would be nice to see high res JPEGs.
- owenversteeg 12y ago
  In my comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855893) I linked to the SWF file by itself, but it seems like even the images in that are low-res.
- bouk 12y ago
  Highest res images I could put together: http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8 http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8
owenversteeg 12y ago
Actual source: http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/12/27/on-ice-100-year-old-negative-discovered-in-antarctic-ice http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/12/27/on-ice-100-y... If you'd like to see the images as large as they are (warning: SWF): http://www.nzaht.org/assets/gallery6/flash/slideshow.swf?r=8279&xmlFileName=gallery_24&index=1&webroot=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nzaht.org%2F&playOnLoad=true http://www.nzaht.org/assets/gallery6/flash/slideshow.swf?r=8...
- dang 12y ago
  Thanks. We changed the url to that from http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/antarctica-conservators-discover-100-year-old-negatives http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/antarctica-conserv.... Also, there is a description of the discovery at http://www.nzaht.org/content/library/Century_old_Antarctic_images_discovered_10_Dec_2013_NZAHT.pdf http://www.nzaht.org/content/library/Century_old_Antarctic_i... [pdf].
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Wow, what's with the awful low resolution scans? As public domain historical material, I thought they'd want to offer them at the best resolution possible.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I guess they were resized for the flash widget: http://www.nzaht.org/ http://www.nzaht.org/ From the press release about the images: Background to the conservation process The photographs found in Captain Scott’s expedition base at Cape Evans, Antarctica required specialist conservation treatment. The Antarctic Heritage Trust (NZ) engaged Photographic Conservator Mark Strange to undertake the painstaking task of separating, cleaning (including removing mould) and consolidating the cellulose nitrate image layers. Twenty-two separate sheets were revealed and sent to New Zealand Micrographic Services for scanning using a Lanovia pre-press scanner. The digital scans were converted to digital positives. So it at least sounds like they would have captured most of the available detail.
    - 12y ago
daveslash 12y ago
That's it: I'm going to go find Douglas Mawson's camera! All joking put aside, it's a really amazing, but sad, story. However, it would appear that his camera and film are still out there. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-mawson-trek/roberts-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-mawson-trek/ro...
Aloha 12y ago
How many of our photos from today will be view able in 100 years? I worry we are entering into the start of a digital black hole as far as our history. We've done a wonderful job in ensuring that we can digitize everything, but not so good with reformatting it all as the march of technology moves on. Film and Silver prints, are quite durable comparatively.
- glifchits 12y ago
  Maybe this doesn't count under your definition of "viewable" but I'm sure one would be able to recover a very high number of photos. If not from the remains of a single hard drive, than from the remains of many hard drives that had once saved or cached that photo. (again, technically and physically challenging, I know)
  - Aloha 12y ago
    My argument is more - there will be a time in the future (probably in my lifetime) where there are no modern computers that can read jpeg - much less the multitude of raw formats so many people seem to want to store their images in. We've seen it with obsolete video tape formats, and other media too. The only real preservation method with digital is to keep it in either online storage, and then reformat it to whatever the current is - or transform it back to analog and store that.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Jpeg is already more than 20 years old and there are multiple liberally licensed implementations. Between that and the tendency for people to emulate everything, I don't think it will be a problem to read jpeg in the future. There's open code for the raw formats too.
- farnsworth 12y ago
  Digital data is easy to copy around as long as you keep up with it, but people don't realize that most media will definitely not last 100 years stuck in a closet. Especially those CD backups you burned in 2005. You might have trouble getting even 10 years out of those. Even your hard drives will crap out sooner or later. Keeping data in a name-brand cloud service might be the best low-maintenance solution for now, as long as you move it if they ever go out of business. But what if the person with the password gets hit by a bus? When I die, all my pictures and thoughts and work will be lost on my personal laptop. It isn't encrypted, but my family wouldn't know how to get past the OS password. The age of perusing the belongings of dead people is past, for better or worse. And how about letters? We have tons of letters from famous people pre-2000, but now their thoughts and communications will be lost locked up on email servers unless either party goes out of their way to save them. Privacy is good, but losing data of historical value is unfortunate.
ShardPhoenix 12y ago
Amusing how modern the guy in the last image looks - demonstrates the (partly) cyclical nature of fashion.
- devb 12y ago
  I guess there are only so many ways to arrange a piece of cloth with some holes in it.
  - bashinator 12y ago
    Also the beard. He'd look like a weirdo in the 80s or 90s, but fit in just fine right now.
- Udo 12y ago
  I think there's more to it than being cyclical. We have experimented with a lot of styles over the centuries and we have arrived at a situation where many of them have been absorbed into the mainstream. For a person alive today, there is just an immense repertoire of clothing styles to choose from. If you look at the crowd in a reasonable metropolitan street you'll probably see most clothing and hair styles of the last 100 years around, at least.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
bouk 12y ago
Uploaded all of the images in the highest quality to imgur: http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8 http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8 Also added descriptions that I found in http://www.nzaht.org//content/plugins/gallery6/xml/gallery_24.xml?x=1402031857015 http://www.nzaht.org//content/plugins/gallery6/xml/gallery_2...
- dingdingdang 12y ago
  Thanks, appreciated, can't believe they wrapped them in flash on primary site?!
- jevinskie 12y ago
  I don't get it. The dirty (as found?) negatives look to be already processed. Did the film survive for a century unprocessed or not?
mongol 12y ago
Reminds me of the photos from the ill-fated arctic balloon expedition in 1897 to the North Pole. Those negatives were found after 30 years and restorated in the 1930s. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e's_Arctic_Balloon_Expedition_of_1897 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e's_Arctic_Ba... .
contingencies 12y ago
I definitely saw a bunch of these at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Tarlton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Tarlton acquarium in Auckland back in January.

125 points by voidlogic 12y ago

Old news: 100-Year-Old Negatives Discovered in Block of Ice in Antarctica Posted by katie hosmer on December 30, 2013 at 10:00am

mkoryak 12y ago
Your post would have been better if it read: Old news: Negatives Discovered in Block of Ice in Antarctica Posted by katie hosmer on December 30, 1913 at 10:00am
- Sonicmouse 12y ago
  What I get down-voted because this was posted on HN 6 months ago and I was just letting everyone know? Maybe I should start posting news stories that Steve Jobs has just passed away. C'mon HN.
  - bsilvereagle 12y ago
    I think the community as a whole realizes that lots of good posts never make it past /new and don't particularly mind "old" news that is interesting making it up to the front page 6 months later.
  - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
    I think they downvoted you because you're not suppose to question the selection of submissions. It adds nothing to the conversation. If it's on the front page, then people like it enough for it to be there. I learned things like that the hard way. Also, HN has a strange hive mind. Saying the same thing in two different posts can get you downvoted in one and upvoted in the other.
  - logicallee 12y ago
    you could have linked the original and done us a service instead of just bitching. That said your comment on it's own is not that out of line. However as a user with no prior karma (-4) you are not really adding to the conversation. I would start with more constructive posts and comments and then feel free to post certain neutral ones like this later.
    - Gravityloss 12y ago
      What does the karma have to do with the post content? I agree about the link though.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

cskau 12y ago

Aw darn, I read 'natives' at first. Photos turning out not nearly as exciting as I had expected..

philosophus 12y ago

Are there better quality images anywhere? On the Antartic Heritage Trust site it's just a crappy Flash slide show. Would be nice to see high res JPEGs.

owenversteeg 12y ago
In my comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855893) I linked to the SWF file by itself, but it seems like even the images in that are low-res.
bouk 12y ago
Highest res images I could put together: http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8 http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8

owenversteeg 12y ago

Actual source: http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/12/27/on-ice-100-year-old-negative-discovered-in-antarctic-ice http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/12/27/on-ice-100-y... If you'd like to see the images as large as they are (warning: SWF): http://www.nzaht.org/assets/gallery6/flash/slideshow.swf?r=8279&xmlFileName=gallery_24&index=1&webroot=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nzaht.org%2F&playOnLoad=true http://www.nzaht.org/assets/gallery6/flash/slideshow.swf?r=8...

dang 12y ago
Thanks. We changed the url to that from http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/antarctica-conservators-discover-100-year-old-negatives http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/antarctica-conserv.... Also, there is a description of the discovery at http://www.nzaht.org/content/library/Century_old_Antarctic_images_discovered_10_Dec_2013_NZAHT.pdf http://www.nzaht.org/content/library/Century_old_Antarctic_i... [pdf].
anigbrowl 12y ago
Wow, what's with the awful low resolution scans? As public domain historical material, I thought they'd want to offer them at the best resolution possible.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I guess they were resized for the flash widget: http://www.nzaht.org/ http://www.nzaht.org/ From the press release about the images: Background to the conservation process The photographs found in Captain Scott’s expedition base at Cape Evans, Antarctica required specialist conservation treatment. The Antarctic Heritage Trust (NZ) engaged Photographic Conservator Mark Strange to undertake the painstaking task of separating, cleaning (including removing mould) and consolidating the cellulose nitrate image layers. Twenty-two separate sheets were revealed and sent to New Zealand Micrographic Services for scanning using a Lanovia pre-press scanner. The digital scans were converted to digital positives. So it at least sounds like they would have captured most of the available detail.
  - 12y ago

daveslash 12y ago

That's it: I'm going to go find Douglas Mawson's camera! All joking put aside, it's a really amazing, but sad, story. However, it would appear that his camera and film are still out there. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-mawson-trek/roberts-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-mawson-trek/ro...

Aloha 12y ago

How many of our photos from today will be view able in 100 years? I worry we are entering into the start of a digital black hole as far as our history. We've done a wonderful job in ensuring that we can digitize everything, but not so good with reformatting it all as the march of technology moves on. Film and Silver prints, are quite durable comparatively.

glifchits 12y ago
Maybe this doesn't count under your definition of "viewable" but I'm sure one would be able to recover a very high number of photos. If not from the remains of a single hard drive, than from the remains of many hard drives that had once saved or cached that photo. (again, technically and physically challenging, I know)
- Aloha 12y ago
  My argument is more - there will be a time in the future (probably in my lifetime) where there are no modern computers that can read jpeg - much less the multitude of raw formats so many people seem to want to store their images in. We've seen it with obsolete video tape formats, and other media too. The only real preservation method with digital is to keep it in either online storage, and then reformat it to whatever the current is - or transform it back to analog and store that.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    Jpeg is already more than 20 years old and there are multiple liberally licensed implementations. Between that and the tendency for people to emulate everything, I don't think it will be a problem to read jpeg in the future. There's open code for the raw formats too.
farnsworth 12y ago
Digital data is easy to copy around as long as you keep up with it, but people don't realize that most media will definitely not last 100 years stuck in a closet. Especially those CD backups you burned in 2005. You might have trouble getting even 10 years out of those. Even your hard drives will crap out sooner or later. Keeping data in a name-brand cloud service might be the best low-maintenance solution for now, as long as you move it if they ever go out of business. But what if the person with the password gets hit by a bus? When I die, all my pictures and thoughts and work will be lost on my personal laptop. It isn't encrypted, but my family wouldn't know how to get past the OS password. The age of perusing the belongings of dead people is past, for better or worse. And how about letters? We have tons of letters from famous people pre-2000, but now their thoughts and communications will be lost locked up on email servers unless either party goes out of their way to save them. Privacy is good, but losing data of historical value is unfortunate.

ShardPhoenix 12y ago

Amusing how modern the guy in the last image looks - demonstrates the (partly) cyclical nature of fashion.

devb 12y ago
I guess there are only so many ways to arrange a piece of cloth with some holes in it.
- bashinator 12y ago
  Also the beard. He'd look like a weirdo in the 80s or 90s, but fit in just fine right now.
Udo 12y ago
I think there's more to it than being cyclical. We have experimented with a lot of styles over the centuries and we have arrived at a situation where many of them have been absorbed into the mainstream. For a person alive today, there is just an immense repertoire of clothing styles to choose from. If you look at the crowd in a reasonable metropolitan street you'll probably see most clothing and hair styles of the last 100 years around, at least.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

bouk 12y ago

Uploaded all of the images in the highest quality to imgur: http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8 http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8 Also added descriptions that I found in http://www.nzaht.org//content/plugins/gallery6/xml/gallery_24.xml?x=1402031857015 http://www.nzaht.org//content/plugins/gallery6/xml/gallery_2...

dingdingdang 12y ago
Thanks, appreciated, can't believe they wrapped them in flash on primary site?!
jevinskie 12y ago
I don't get it. The dirty (as found?) negatives look to be already processed. Did the film survive for a century unprocessed or not?

mongol 12y ago

Reminds me of the photos from the ill-fated arctic balloon expedition in 1897 to the North Pole. Those negatives were found after 30 years and restorated in the 1930s. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e's_Arctic_Balloon_Expedition_of_1897 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e's_Arctic_Ba... .

contingencies 12y ago

I definitely saw a bunch of these at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Tarlton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Tarlton acquarium in Auckland back in January.