Yesterday, Jason Kottke of kottke.org did a cool project in honor of Walter Cronkite and the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. He set up a page with just a vintage television on it, and then aired the CBS coverage of the moon landing at the same times during the day it was originally broadcast. It’s a great way to remember both the moon landing event and Walter Cronkite’s legacy as a journalist, but it was also an incredible method to simulate the experience of a mass television audience on the internet. The footage was hosted on youtube, but the video just turned on when it was time, with no control from the user, and if you wanted to leave, you couldn’t rewind or start it over again. The images were grainy and hard to make out, several times the image flipped upside-down or reversed polarity, and the audio was crackly, but I was pretty mesmerized.
The feeling was amplified by how mesmerized the announcers were as well. There were a lot of great moments from the astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin reporting that he was going to make sure not to lock the LEM door on the way out, but one of my favorites came from Walter Cronkite. “Oh, thank you television, for letting us watch this one,” he said, just as Neil came into view. “Isn’t this something.”
Watch the moon landing coverage:
You can watch all of the coverage on youtube – I particularly recommend the moon landing, and the moon walk clips one (“One small step for man”), three (making sure not to lock the door), and six (planting the flag – “nothing more is needed here,” Cronkite says, “but it does seem that there oughta be some music.”)