The BAA Saturn report for 1891–’92 stated that the shadows of Mimas and Enceladus had been recorded by two observers with small apertures. But the observations were never repeated at later ring-plane passages. In this short paper, we explore the history of satellite shadow observations in general and put forward an explanation of why these observers at that particular time thought they had succeeded in their observations where later observers, and even their CCD cameras, have so conspicuously failed. At the same time, as image-processing routines become increasingly complex, a warning is given about the use of a certain software application for stacking images.