Beschreibung:

Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon, a group of Polaroids from the first television broadcast (12), Apollo 11, 20 July 1969 Twelve vintage Polaroid gelatin silver prints, full sheets 10.8 x 19cm (4 ¼ x 7 1/2in), each numbered in ink on recto £600-800 Provenance: From the collection of a former Director of the Lunar Mapping Division, Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas; two also with the name Bender in pencil, verso (Merritt J. Bender, 1929-2011, Mapping Sciences Laboratory, MSC, Houston). Extraordinarily early images of man’s first steps on the Moon, captured by the Apollo Lunar Surface Camera. There are six views of Aldrin descending the ladder from the LM and five of Armstrong and Aldrin setting up the U.S. flag; the twelfth is a Polaroid data reference sheet. Taken by a Polaroid camera with a 4 x 5in film back attached to a Fairchild monitor broadcasting the first television pictures received at the Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, either at Mission Control or at the Mapping Laboratory, both of which had a simultaneous feed of pictures in real time. (Information kindly supplied by a former colleague of the late owner.) Distinctive spots indicate that these images originated from the scan-converted television broadcast sent via satellite and microwave relays from Parkes, Australia. News organisations would have used similar techniques in that pre-digital era to obtain first-generation still images for publication, but their survival rate appears to be negligible. NASA’s infamous loss of its slow-scan television recordings gives these images even greater historical significance. For a full account of the Apollo 11 television pictures first received in Australia see John Sarkissian, On Eagles’ Wings. The Parkes Observatory’s Support of the Apollo 11 Mission, 2000 (online).