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In 2019 I acquired a car full of books from the late Peter Richards-Jones, in my role as Librarian for the Society for the History of Astronomy. Many of the books have joined the Library and others have been sold on. Amongst the books, were a couple of boxes of old slides and film reels of various formats from the 1950s onwards. Earlier this year I finally got around to sorting through these boxes. After consulting with a number of people, I decided I would have to study the films in case there was anything of astronomical significance. I purchased a second hand projector from the 1970s which could play Super8 and regular 8 film, and once I’d worked out how to use, projected the films onto my dining room wall and watched them. Most were family videos of holidays abroad, and using my DSLR camera I recorded video of the film being projected on a white wall. I have since sent these digital copies to the son of Peter who is overjoyed to see the footage he has never seen before of his family and of himself from the 1960s and 1970s. There were several films of the Moon and of the Sun in eclipse, but there were also three films of historic importance. The first is a film showing what I believe is the construction of a building at Ewell Observatory; I’ve messaged them but no reply yet. The second is a 10 minute long film of the 1973 eclipse of the Sun as viewed from the Monte Umbe – the last 30 seconds or so of the video show people onboard and once I’ve edited the eclipse I will share this. The third is a 3 minute video of a Winchester Weekend at King Alfred’s College in Winchester. There is no date, but with the help of Richard McKim and Martin Mobberley we are pretty sure it is the 1972 Winchester Weekend, held in July 1972. The write up of this meeting by Charles Wise and the accompanying group photograph is posted here and taken from JBAA 1972, 82, 6, pages 440-441. I showed the video at the Winchester Weekend just and promised to share it on the BAA Forum. We are keen to know if anyone was at this meeting and would love to know who the people are who appear in the video. It would also be valuable for the BAA Archives if others had videos of past Winchester Weekends, or other BAA events from the past. There is no sound to this film.
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