Solar eclipses were long thought to be magic. In fact, ancient female astronomers like Hypatia and Aglaonice of Thessaly were called witches when they accurately predicted the occurrence of an eclipse.
Of course, we now know that eclipses are the result of the moon blotting out the sun for a temporary period. But back in 1900, people couldn't just fire up YouTube to catch a glimpse of the astronomical phenomenon. So to those who had never seen such a thing before (i.e. everyone), the first filmed footage of a solar eclipse must've looked pretty, well, magical.
Now the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) and the British Film Institute (BFI) has restored that incredible footage—the oldest on record—and you can watch it here:
The video was originally filmed in May 1900 in North Carolina by Nevil Maskelyne, a novice filmmaker and member of the RAS. More importantly, Maskelyne was also a magician, so he was used to wowing audiences with spectacular sights. To capture the footage of the eclipse, he had to attach a special lens to his camera called a cinematograph telescope.
Later that year, Maskelyne screened the footage at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London as a prelude to his magic show.
The RAS has the original film and worked jointly with the BFI to scan and restore the video in 4K, per a press release. The original version was filmed between five and six frames per second on celluloid, a plastic material derived from camphor and nitrocellulose, and the entire film was digitized at nine frames per second to produce a higher quality picture.
The eclipse footage is part of BFI's free "Victorian Film" series, which features 500 movies of British origin that were created between 1895 and 1901 in honor of Queen Victoria's 200th birthday.
Source: LiveScience
