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When a Burning Reel Smashed a Boy and Erased Cinema's Memory
When a Burning Reel Smashed a Boy and Erased Cinema's Memory
A ten-minute blaze in June 1914 sent a burning metal film reel flying out of a supposedly fireproof vault and struck ten-year-old Ray Eidio on North Garnet Street-destroying roughly the equivalent of 5,000 films and erasing footage such as a 15-minute Gettysburg reunion and the first credited screen appearance of Oliver Hardy. What exactly ignited the nitrate archive inside a vault inspected and declared safe the day before, and why did a temperature rise inside a sealed, bank-grade room go unnoticed until it was too late?
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