Mondo Knows Facts
Archives keep projectors for long dead formats
A print in 9.5mm or 28mm is unplayable without a machine built for it Film archives maintain projectors, inspection benches and splicers for gauges that manufacturers stopped making decades ago. Engineers machine replacement parts or combine two broken machines into one working unit. Where no projector survives, an adapted scanner can still copy the images. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
Digital masters need copying every few yearsDrives fail and file formats go obsolete, so archives rewrite their holdingsSafety film replaced nitrate in the 1950sAcetate stock burned slowly, though it decayed into vinegar over timeThe Academy keeps its own film archiveIts collection holds thousands of titles for preservation and studyThe registry protects home movies and newsreelsNewsreels, adverts and family films sit alongside studio featuresFederal money pays for film preservationThe national preservation programme gives grants to archives and librariesNitrate film is stored in isolated vaultsArchives separate it because a fire could spread through a collection
๐ฌ Movies & TVfact 195 of 200
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Tags: preservation, projection, archives
Archives keep projectors for long dead formats: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- A print in 9.5mm or 28mm is unplayable without a machine built for it. The figure is taken from BFI, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a movies & tv fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.