A view of a total solar eclipse filmed in 1900 has been rediscovered and restored. It is the earliest known surviving astronomical film. For decades it was believed lost, but recently a Royal Astronomical Society archivist found the precious clip in the society’s records. It was unlabeled and likely had not seen the light of day since the turn of the century.

It was filmed by Nevil Maskelyne, son of a London magician who was also the co-owner of the Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly magic theater. The magic shows employed the latest technology to craft astonishing illusions on the stage (he had an orchestra of automata), and he was an early adopter of the moving picture camera.

(Many of the pioneering filmmakers at the dawn of the art form were magicians, most famously Georges Méliès who created an astronomical film of his own with his indelible science fiction masterpiece A Trip to the Moon.)

Nevil was a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) and an avid amateur astronomer. It was his idea to use a moving picture camera to film an eclipse because it would be the first time it was captured and it would prove the new technology was not just a novelty for entertainment purposes, but an effective tool for scientific observation. Nevil invented a telescopic adapter for the kinematograph and dubbed his new camera the animatograph.

His first attempt wasn’t actually done by him. He sent the animatograph to India with fellow accomplished amateurs Reverend John Bacon and his daughter Gertrude Bacon to film the May 28, 1898 eclipse. The shoot all seemed to go well, but the film can was stolen on the trip back and never recovered.

Nevil Maskelyne tried again in May 1900, and this time he traveled in person to North Carolina as part of the British Astronomical Association Expedition. But then the vagaries of travel struck again and this time it was his equipment that was lost. It never made it across the Atlantic. Nevil would not be deterred, and he ginned up a new camera and telescopic adapter with whatever he could find in North Carolina.

Amazingly, it worked. He shot an eclipse of five frames per second during the full totality and four minutes after. It was an achievement celebrated all over the world. Nonetheless, it suffered the same fate as so many thousands of silent films until it was rediscovered. BFI National Archive restorers scanned the film and digitally restored it, making the finished work freely available on their YouTube channel.

Without further ado: