Yesterday I took the afternoon to go to the Museum of Moving Image in Astoria, NY. At first, I could not find the museum because the museum’s structure did not look distinctive to my eyes. Unfortunately, the museum is undergoing renovations right now; only two floors of the museum are open and the exterior of it looks like a trailer.

However, I made my entry through the admissions trailer and proceeded to the second floor. I was very excited to walk through the entire Behind the Screen exhibit. The history of the Golden Age of Hollywood was all around me. There were plenty of old photos, historical film cameras, and old televisions and radios. The plethora of artifacts were numerous and quite fascinating. I poured through much of the exhibit for several hours until closing.

Here are some of the highlights of my visit. This picture above of several cathode ray tubes were used in some of the earliest made black and white television sets. Professor Mercado explained the physics of how the cathode ray tubes project images onto the television screen. It was absolutely delightful that I actually got to see a real old-fashioned cathode ray! After actually seeing it in person, the entire process of light projecton to television image became less abstract and more tangible.

This picture is an underexposed photo of an Edison Kinetoscope. Unfortunately, unlike Lumiere’s Cinematographe, the Kinetoscope could not print or project film. The Kinetoscope was a wonderful invention for its time, however, it was primarily used as a viewing machine where patrons could watch a 30 second film for 25 cents through a viewfinder. The Lumiere Cinematographe was a much more efficient device for its time; the user could use the hand-crank to power it and its light weight made it portable.

(I apologize for the extremely overexposed light on the marquee)

On the third floor, I walked into Tut’s fever, which is essentially the Museum of Moving Image’s little movie theater. They were showing The Red Balloon as their film of the week. Unfortunately, I wanted to see more of the museum and did not have time to see the film. I walked inside Tut’s fever and it looked like the inside of a cartoon pyramid! There was even an area where you could pull a lever to see a mummy come out of his grave!

The Museum of Moving Image had a variety of costumes on display. I had the pleasure of seeing some of the costumes from the movie Chicago and costumes that were used in the Cosby Show and skits in Saturday Night Live. I saw this huge Gumby costume and had to take a photo of it. I plumb forgot to read what movie or tv show this costume was used in.

Overall, my trip to the museum was oodles of fun. I spent the last hour playing video games in the History of Video Games section. It’s been years since I’ve played Super Mario Brothers on an 8-bit Nintendo and Sonic the Hedgehog on a 16-bit Sega Genesis. It’s also really sad that I was able to easily beat those games at ages 5 and 6; now I see ‘GAME OVER’ after the second levels. Sigh.