Thursday, January 24, 2019

Universe, a Space Documentary from 1960



In 1960, the National Film Board of Canada produced a film that followed the work of Ontario astronomer Donald MacRae. Universe introduces us to the moon, the sun, nine planets, and further heavenly bodies. Here is what we knew of the universe before Hubble, before Voyager, even before John Glenn's first orbital flight. A young filmmaker named Stanley Kubrick saw the film and was inspired to do a space movie, which became 2001: A Space Odyssey. He even used the narrator of the documentary, Douglas Rain, as the voice of HAL 9000. Read more about how Universe inspired Kubrick at Kottke. (via Nag on the Lake

3 comments:

  1. In the late 50's a had a 'grocery store encyclopedia' which stated the earth was a billion years old and the universe 4 billion. Over the last 60 plus years I have aged ahh, 60 years but the earth has aged from 1 to 4 billion and the universe from 4 to 13 billion. So I figure on a cosmic scale I'm not doing so bad.

    Oh yeah, over the last six months the earth went from 4.5 billion to 4.6 billion years.

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  2. Redwood trees think baseball is action packed.

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