Best of the History Guy: History Lost

[Music] at 12 16 a.m on july 12 1973 the olivet missouri fire department received a call that there was a fire at the national personnel records center in overland missouri they responded quickly they had firefighters on scene within four minutes but by then the top floor of the sixth story building was already engulfed in flames eventually 42 fire districts would respond to put out the fire which burnt on controlled for 22 hours and destroyed between 16 and 18 million u.s military personnel records in addition the firefighters poured millions of gallons on the roof which did further damage to files on the fifth and sixth floor according to the current archivist of the united states david pereiro it was an unparalleled loss to the cultural heritage of our nation the 1973 fire at the national personnel record center is history that deserves to be remembered the national personnel record center building opened in 1956 after a series of mergers from other agencies after world war ii the building was designed by the department of defense to consolidate records for the demobilized records branch the air force record center and the naval records management center the nprc took custodianship of millions of records from these three centers and for a time was under the department of defense as a combined army navy air force facility in 1960 the facility was transferred to the responsibility of the general service administration and the three centers were consolidated into a single records center under the national archives and record service the building in overland was designed by the detroit architectural firm of helmuth yamasaki and line weber first they did a study of existing facilities including the naval records center in garden city new york and a department of defense facility in alexandria virginia the two facilities held different views about how best to protect the records an argument that reflected a deeper argument among librarians and archivists around the country the facility in new york strongly recommended the new facility be equipped with sprinkler systems but the virginia center argued that flooding was a greater danger and that sprinkler systems presented more risk than they were worth ultimately the finished building did not include a sprinkler system certainly the archives and record service had its work cut out for its record collection grew quickly after 1956 swelling from 38 million to 52 million records and consolidating both marine corps and coast guard records the job of managing the records included retrieving information for the public was made more complicated because the building house tenant offices for the fbi and other agencies as well as liaison services for the various military branches the service struggled with the finished design which had huge storage spaces unbroken by any kind of firewall the service was also understandably concerned about the lack of a sprinkler smoke detection system which is decided as early as 1956 would be required in any new storage buildings 2200 employees worked in the building by 1973. in the first hours of july 12 1973 the spark that turned the issues into a catastrophe was lit and the top floor of the center caught fire less than 20 minutes after the fire been reported there were firefighters on the fifth floor of the building reporting heavy smoke and extreme heat on the sixth floor eventually 42 fire districts would assist in fighting the fire all under the command of community fire protection district chief john gurken and his deputy john kennedy hose companies fought the fire from inside the building on the sixth floor but the growing fire and heavy smoke prevented them from pinpointing the fire the situation inside continued to deteriorate and by 3 15 am the firefighters were recalled from the building the firefighters quickly faced an even greater problem by 6 am they had been dumping water onto the fire for nearly 6 hours without stopping it and they were running out of water pressure at 6 12 firefighters asked the water company to increase the pressure possible shortly after the fire was spreading across the entire length of the building they called again to request more water pressure shortly before 9 am but 2 hours later the entire roof of the building was a flame and before noon the west wall was leaning 6 to 8 inches from the vertical miraculously the fire had not yet spread to the building's lower floors though the firefighters remain concerned that the rest of the building was at risk despite issues of water pressure the companies continued to pour water into the sixth floor from outside at 2 44 a.m on july 14th almost 48 hours since the fighter fighters had first been withdrawn they were back on the sixth floor fighting the blaze from inside shortly before noon later that day one of the pump trucks failed completely after running continuously for more than 40 hours fire crews continued to pour water on the intermittent blaze for two more days to prevent it from rekindling and only on the morning of the 16th did the crews depart completely the crisis as far as the fire department was concerned was over but the work of the record service to recover from the disaster was only just begun even while the flames were still burning national archive and record service staff have been making decisions about the recovery on july 12 instructions were sent out to halt all mail coming to the nprc on a typical day the center received thousands of requests for information as well as new records arriving at the center for the first time it was no small feat for the postal service and other agencies to comply fully the fire destroyed millions of records though the exact number isn't certain there were no copies or microfilm of the records and no index had been made for them additionally millions were unknown to the veterans administration making it difficult to identify a precise number estimates suggest as many as 16 to 18 million official military personnel files were lost records which included information about a veteran's enlistment service assignments training qualification awards disciplinary actions more 80 of the records belonging to discharge members of the army from 1912 to 1960 were destroyed along with 75 percent of the records belonging to the air force personnel discharged between 1947 and 1964. some additional files from other branches were being sorted through for information requests and were also destroyed though the exact number is unknown some records were hurried out of the building on july 12 as well including computer records which represented an index to much of the collection operating records of the center itself had a hundred thousand reels of microfilm of morning reporting from the army in 1912 to 1959 in the air force 1947-1959 these records would prove invaluable to the recovery effort even in the early days of recovery the national archive and record service was committed to preserving what records they could that could be used to reconstruct the service record of veterans whose records have been destroyed on july 23 10 days after the fire a federal property management bulletin went out to all government agencies to stop any destruction of any records that could be used to reconstruct the data once they understood would have been lost the bolton was amended to protect data only concerning the lost data an interagency committee was formed with representatives from the different branches records groups to determine what kinds of records each had that might be used to reconstruct the damaged or destroyed service records an article from the american archivist the year after the fire noted that an impressive spirit of cooperation characterized the sometimes competing goals of saving records from the sixth floor demolishing and repairing the building and the stringent safety measures that were put into effect after the recovery effort would not be easy the fire had almost totally destroyed the sixth floor storing concrete columns and the roof had mostly collapsed shelving units were twisted by the heat and seemingly intact filing cabinets held only small charred piles of ash complicating all of it was water millions of gallons had been poured on the building in the initial fire and firefighters continued to pour water on until the end of the month to prevent sporadic kindling pipes on the sixth floor continued to leak until the water could be cut off it was inches deep in storage areas on every level of the building damaging records all over hot and humid st louis weather encouraged the growth of mold on the already vulnerable collection their first objective was to remove the records they could but the damage had ruined the building's electrical system immobilizing the elevators and escalators employees may do by putting dish soap on the rubber handrails of the escalators to turn them into excellent conveyor belts eventually an external elevator a buck hoist was installed outside to move the records out more quickly the first estimates of damage were appalling some suggest only 10 percent of the records on the sixth floor could have survived ultimately they find the damage was worst to the army records between 1912 and 1960 in the air force between 1947 and 1964. they hired a company to abolish the sixth floor which would give them access to some areas that were totally blocked off by damage they found that in the most heavily damaged areas a high volume of water had actually protected the records from the fire especially on lower shells which despite the metal twisting in the heat had been too wet to ignite so soaked but comparably intact records were found with increasing frequency as the demolition continued ultimately more than 6 million records were recovered from the building and many of them needed to be dried they were first sent to a civilian storage facility in milk cartons to help them air dry they were sprayed with a solution vent bowl while they looked for a better solution they learned that the mcdonald douglas aircraft corporation in st louis had vacuum drying facilities originally designed to simulate vacuum conditions for the apollo mission after testing it the government sent the nearly ninety thousand cubic feet of records to three chambers at mcdonnell douglas later also to a nasa facility in ohio two thousand containers could fit inside the chamber and nearly eight pounds of water removed from each container almost eight tons of water each time the chamber was filled the national archive and record service next put the recovered files into their index called the b file as the records were dried punch cards were prepared to make the surviving records more easily accessible the center was given computer access to the indexes of the va to help reconstruct service records and as the center returned to normal functions a new group was created the records input and reconstruction branch dedicated to solving the problems caused by the lost records after the fire the building was brought up to the national archive and record service standards of fire safety including smoke detectors and fire suppression systems the storage areas were also air conditioned as the mold spores were made dormant by the drying process they remained a risk if they were reintroduced to st louis's humidity today records taken from the b-file are still checked for mold and remediation procedures are in place for those records to show any signs of mold investigation into the fire's cause were carried out even while the fire was burning but despite extensive investigation they could not determine precisely the fire's cause point of origin or time of ignition interviews with employees found nothing employees who had been on the 6th floor only 20 minutes before the fire had noticed nothing unusual newspaper reports suggested the possibility of cigarettes thrown careless into trash cans but no evidence of this was ever found the fbi could not determine a cause except to rule out arson while the gsa suspected an electrical short but said that the damage to the sixth floor was so severe that they didn't think an exact cause could ever be found the loss of these millions of records represent an incalculable loss to millions of americans and their loved ones although some of the records have been recovered many of them are simply lost forever and perhaps most grievously veterans who lost their medical records have faced all sorts of challenges because those records are missing future generations who want to know about their loved ones might not even be able to find out exactly what was lost in the fire despite all efforts to try to retrieve the information even today 46 years after the fire the center expends the equivalent of more than 40 full-time personnel each year worked exclusively on responding to requests involving records lost in the fire the monumental effort and lessons learned in this recovery have and will continue to affect the way that we store preserve and duplicate these records that are so vital to the history and legacy of our nation the individual stories of these service personnel are smaller parts of broader events and the loss is it once both very personal and a national tragedy the national personnel record center was moved from its facility in overland missouri in 2005 to a new facility in spanish lakes missouri and continues to be an invaluable resource to veterans genealogists and historians in january 1921 hundreds of people watched as the fire department fought a fire in the u.s commerce building in washington d.c unable to reach the source of the smoke the fire department eventually just chopped holes in the floor and pumped down thousands of gallons of water in hope of quenching the blaze it took years to fully understand the cost of that fire because it wasn't just damage to part of a federal building it was the loss of part of american history the 1890 u.s census counted 63 million people living in the united states but records for only some six thousand of those survive today the story of how only point zero zero zero one percent of the eighteen ninety 1890 u.s census remains is a story of mismanagement that resulted in literally forgetting our history and led to the creation of the united states national archives to protect our government records it is history that deserves to be remembered the american constitution requires the taking of a decennial meaning once every 10 year census the first in 1790 with the results being used to determine representation in the house of representatives before the census bureau was created in 1902 the census was handled by the department of the interior and over the 19th century was refined as the american population exploded and the nation grew across the continent the 1890 census was different from prior censuses in a few ways the first was that it was the first census where copies of the schedules the large sheets on which the information was recorded were not required to be kept by local county clerk offices which meant that the originals sent to washington were the only copies the census had also expanded to track more information than earlier censuses about race home ownership and more the 1890 census also marked the end of the american frontier the final report concluded that at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line most significantly the 1890 census was the first census to have information tabulated by machine hermann hollerath at age 19 it helped compile the 1880 census and saw the need for a machine that would help the census workers count the quickly multiplying millions of people living in the united states during the 1880s hollerith developed tabulating machines specifically designed to assist with decreasing the amount of time it took to compile the census from the eight years it took to process the 1880 census to a hopeful six years for 1890 the machines used punch cards to simplify counting and innovation that would last into the computing age later hollar's company would be one of the companies that merged to form ibm robert porter superintendent of the census was awed by the modern marvel for the first time in the history of the world the count of the population of a great nation has been made with the help of electricity he said the increases in speed and efficiency were enormous the first rough count of the us population was completed in only six weeks the official count was released in december 62 million six hundred twenty two thousand two hundred and fifty the tabulating machines ultimately would save more than two years in processing time and five million dollars for the us government not to mention that it was now possible to draw any combination of numbered facts from the data the most complicated at no more expense than the simpler ones allowing the data to be much better used and explained in reports one expert statistician reported that the machines work as unerringly as the mills of the gods but beats them hollow as to speed the newfound speed didn't save the census from controversy however most of the enumerators the census employees in charge of the tabulation had earned their positions through political patronage and there was no examination required to qualify carl scherz former secretary of the interior during the rutherford hayes administration said of them that they cannot spell and they cannot do arithmetic after the census was completed accusations of fraud and undercounting were rampant new york the most populous state in the census was accused of bolstering numbers for their own gain an intense business competition between saint paul and minneapolis minnesota would lead to 19 convictions over businessmen adding 1100 false names to the schedules in fact the u.s public was in an uproar too before the census was completed the nation had worked itself into a froth of excitement the new york times reported our males of arms bearing age will make every civilized nation a pygmy relation and our wealth will grow by millions to more millions than purse proud britain can boast given the enormous growth from 1790 to 1860 in putting aside the civil war that had interrupted the country's growth the country expected to be impressed but 63 million was not the number the public wanted one writer noted that the count sent into spasms of indignation a great many people who had made up their minds that the dignity of the republic could only be supported on a total of 75 million it took another two years for all the data to be properly tabulated and collected but then there was another problem where to put it all the government didn't have a specific space to store all this data there was no national archive no group of people who were responsible for preserving this collected data for posterity each agency was responsible for its own records and in the 19th century many were lost or destroyed before all of the general statistic volumes for 1890 had even been published portions of special schedules for the disabled mortality schedules and more were damaged by a fire destroyed by the interior department the general population schedules appeared to be unharmed however as in 1903 a census clerk reported that they were in fairly good condition demands for the government to protect and store government files had been growing for decades in 1884 the founding of the american historical association provided a serious entity to lobby for better document protection during the 1800s even the most important documents to the republic were often rolled up and moved in both the declaration of independence and the constitution were kept in wooden cabinets at the department of state in 1895 j franklin jameson a professor at brown university submitted a plan for the collection and publication of government materials to the aha and in 1898 the association sent congress a plan for a hall of records but no progress was made towards its establishment for several decades the fateful event that would lead to the establishment of the national archives occurred on january 10 1921 many census records were stored in a fireproof and waterproof vault in the basement of the commerce building but the original schedules for the 1890 census were stored on wooden shelving in an unlocked storage room outside of the vault at about five o'clock on january 10th a commerce building watchman reported smoke though he could find a fire the desk watchmen called the fire department as another watchman fled the basement which was full of smoke the fire department poured water into the building for the next five hours while a crowd gathered to watch they cut holes into the concrete floor of the first floor and from there flooded the basement getting the fire under control by 9 45 though they continued to drench hot spots until 10 30. though the damage to records was obvious and serious there was no disaster plan in place and except for a few watchmen everybody then went home census clerks assessed the damage with dismay the next morning a crack in a glass window of the vault meant some of the protected schedules were damaged but most serious was damaged to the 1890 census which were according to one witness first in the path of the firemen sam rogers the census director reported that 25 of the schedules were destroyed while 50 of the rest were damaged by water smoke and fire later estimates would put the amount destroyed at 15 to 25 percent the bureau thought it would be possible to salvage many of the records if a huge effort was made to copy them but a census clerk reported morosely that they were almost certain to be ruined there's no way to restore the legibility of a water-soaked volume the news journal of wilmington delaware reported that the loss was probably the worst of its kind in the government's history pieces of the 1830 40 80 1900 and 1910 census were also damaged the damage was exacerbated when four days later the census clerks were still being denied access to the schedules while the insurance company examined the damage meanwhile speculation about how the fire started was roiling the country many suspected that despite a no smoking rule in the building a discarded cigarette was to blame a woman in ohio was convinced that the fire had been started to destroy her family's records and therefore robbed them of their property others said that it must have started in the wood shop or the boiler room some even suggested spontaneous combustion investigators did later determine where the fire had begun but ultimately neither the census director nor anyone else found a definitive cause for the blaze the public was furious the washington post pointed out that the constitution and the declaration of independence remained at risk at the state department calls for the national archives multiplied from professionals organizations and members of the government when rumors began flying that the interior department planned to destroy the damaged census petitions flooded in to demand the records be salvaged including from the national genealogical society and the daughters of the american revolution the government insisted they had no plans to destroy the records and herbert hoover at the time secretary of commerce wrote that the actual cost of providing a watchman an extra fire service to protect records probably amounts to more if we take the government as a whole than it would cost to put up a proper fireproof archive building in may of 1921 the records were returned to the commerce building as no appropriations had been made it wasn't until 1926 that congress appropriated funds to build the national archives building which would eventually cost more than 177 million dollars in today's dollars the buildings hit halfway between the capital and the white house and taking up two blocks had its cornerstone laid on february twentieth nineteen thirty three it wasn't until the next year that president franklin roosevelt approved the creation of an agency to staff the building on june 19 1934 unfortunately the 1890 census wouldn't survive to see it in december of 1932 the chief clerk of the census bureau sent a list of items to the librarian of congress if they were not of historical interest the items were up for destruction item 22 on the list was the 1890 census and without comment the librarian sitted onto congress where on february 21st one day after the cornerstone for the building meant to protect it was laid the census was authorized for destruction it's not completely clear when the final schedules from the 1890 census were destroyed or why there was no objection given the national outcry in 1921 but by differing accounts the schedules many of which presumably were undamaged were destroyed in 1934 or 1935 and since then only a handful of schedules that were in other locations have been identified preserving the record for only some 6 000 people the loss of the 1890 census was an irretrievable devastating loss for people who study things like demographics and genealogy we preserve our federal records like our census schedules because that's a vital part of preserving our nation's history our census schedules are a snapshot of who we were and how we lived in that time and their loss doesn't just damage our understanding of our national history but our ability to research and find our personal connection to that history and the loss of the 1890 census reminds us of how important it is that we preserve and protect our own archive of the past those things like photo albums and letters in family stories that are our connection to our history [Music] around noon on december 7 1978 a group of employees of the national archive and record service were having lunch outside a federal storage facility in suitland maryland when they heard a distinct thump come from inside the facility the manager went inside to check out the noise only to come running out shouting fire inside the facility were thousands of reels and millions of feet of irreplaceable newsreel footage covering the period 1929 to 1967. 911 was called and the fire department was there within seven minutes yet despite their heroic efforts after about four hours of fighting the fire it was clear that the damage had been done the fire at the federal center in suitland maryland is history that deserves to be remembered the suitland maryland federal center film vaults were a complex of three buildings built in 1945 with the intended purpose of storing nitrate film nitrate film was the first flexible and commercialized film base and was first sold by eastman kodak in 1889. unfortunately nitrate film had a reputation for being extremely flammable even setting projectors aflame while being screened the first such incident was recorded as early as 1896 an early form of plastic once nitrate ignites it produces its own oxygen which is what makes it so flammable nitrate films also degrade quickly after only a few decades and as they degrade they release a gas that is no less flammable than the film there have been numerous nitrate fires in film vaults throughout the world motion picture studios including rko universal and warner brothers have had devastating vault fires cultural institutions charged with the preservation of film have also had large nitrate fires including cinematic francais national film board of canada george eastman house and the museum of modern art combat this problem the suitland buildings were equipped with numerous vaults that were contained and separated to prevent the spread of fires the system had worked as recently as 1977 when a fire in vault c had destroyed some 800 000 feet of historical nitrate film but because of the vault system the fire was contained in just one vault and millions of feet of other film was protected when universal donated 28 million feet of newsreel in the early 1970s it was clear to all parties that the vaults which had been meant to be temporary but have been storing nitrate film for 25 years were in desperate need of updates to properly protect the fragile films universal helped to pay for updates including a rapid release fire suppression system and improved vault doors which were completed in 1973. the 1977 fire in building c inspired the government to do more to protect the nitrate films still in the vaults they increased physical inspections of collection to dispose of films that had become dangerous through decay and increased their monitoring of humidity within the vaults themselves if the humidity was too high it could cause the films to auto ignite additionally the general service administration was installing new air conditioning systems and adding insulation to the buildings with an eye towards long-term care during this time the national archives and records service or nars was doing everything it could to transfer the news reel and outtakes to considerably safer acetate film by the time of the fire most of the news reels had been converted and the employees were looking through the outtakes to determine how much of it was worth transferring this is part of the work that the employees who first witnessed the smoke were taking a break from when they heard the first explosion on december 7 1978. the employees stayed nearby but were helpless to do anything but watch as two more explosions rocked the complex i've never seen anything like it in my life said prince george county police officer joseph frolic i saw smoke coming out of the building and called my dispatcher with a fire report then there was a boom the firemen got here a minute later and started go in then there was another boom and they went flying back against the fence it was incredible the firefighters rushed into the complex with mask on to combat the toxic fumes sprang out of the vaults under the impression that workers were trapped inside they opened up closed vaults and called out while other firefighters smashed windows to get to blaze ultimately the fire and fumes were too much and once it was determined that no one was left inside the firefighters retreated as they left the building a backdraft explosion knocked down a wall and injured two of the firefighters one of the difficulties with nitrate film was that it burns very hot and is difficult to put out it will even continue burning if submerged completely the entire area was blanketed with the caustic smell of burning film and authorities were worried about the potential health effects of smoke that included toxic sulfur dioxide and hydrogen cyanide if it was inside a closed space it would have been deadly but even in the open air it was dangerous so authorities wearing masks protect themselves from the smoke went to the residences and businesses downwind trying to evacuate the people i thought it was some sort of swat team coming to a get a guy with a gun said one resident but then i opened the door and there was all the smell and i couldn't breathe other people simply fled at the sight of the smoke and the sound of the explosions in all some hundred people were evacuated until the smoke would clear the washington post described the firefighters clustering upwind of the building sending water through the burnt out walls the building spotted flames 20 to 30 feet high took more than an hour to contain by that time most of the news rail had already been destroyed and at least 18 of the 27 vaults had been breached and some eighteen thousand canisters of film burned before the advent of televised network news programs and the internet newsreels were one of the main sources people had for news universal studios produced and released newsreels twice a week from 1929 until 1967. the news roles were shown in movie theaters and each usually contained five to seven stories averaging two minutes long in 1974 universal newsreel deeded its edited newsreel and outtake collection to the united states through the national archives the irony was that the films were donated specifically because it was believed that the national archives was the best place to preserve them jack a rush universal's film librarian said they were going to preserve them all so they would be safe over 12 million feet of film went up in flames the main body of the reels destroyed were from volumes 14 to 17 which covered the years from 1941 to 1945. the reels were said to include film of the bombing of pearl harbor other world war ii battlefield footage and scenes from the depression as well as highlights of all sporting events world series babe ruth's home runs the notre dame football team under newt rockne fashions or whatever else had been top news in the world james moore the director of audio visual for nars said that there's no way to put an estimate on the film loss because its value was historical much of it was outtakes of newsreels made during world war ii and had never been seen by the public while there were copies of the newsreels themselves universal had no prints of these outtakes making them an irretrievable loss rush commented this film is naturally the history of your country i am really at a loss for words in this fourteen firemen three civilians and one police officer were reported injured in the fire or treated for smoke inhalation but none of them seriously the inevitable question came next how did the fire start the general service administration conducted an investigation into the fire and the house of representatives held a hearing on the investigation and safety of other nitrate storage facilities the general service administration came to the conclusion that what was likely happened was that workers installing the air conditioning system started an accidental fire with a spark from one of their power tools and that it likely started in discarded cardboard or debris as nitrate film fires developed rapidly in seconds but the fire did not involve nitrate film until 15 to 20 minutes after work stopped the fire department disagreed with this explanation instead they suggested that failures in the air conditioning system actually cause the vault to heat up instead of cool down and this caused the nitrate film to auto ignite as it had in the previous fire the air conditioning system had been leaking freon for months prior to the fire and the employees were waiting for the issue to be addressed at the time of the fire the gsa report included the accusation that nars had ignored the auto ignition theory because dwelling on such matters would only make the agency look bad the gsa investigation argued that not only had they done the requisite investigation but that spontaneous combustion would actually help relieve the agency of blame and that experts simply thought that the possibility was extremely unlikely whatever the cause of the fire the insta investigation and subsequent hearing came up with a number of recommendations to protect the remaining nitrate films at suitland and elsewhere under the government's stewardship what was common between the two investigations was a series of mistakes that led to the severity of the disaster when fire broke out in the suitland nitrate vaults the national archives was in violation of several of the principles that the national archives themselves had helped to establish over years of research the sprinklers were turned off because workmen were upgrading them and the workers are using power tools and perhaps even a blow torch in the vicinity of highly combustible materials with none of the designs in place that were intended to prevent the spread of fire the configuration moved quickly and the vaults exploded the firefighters in an effort to rescue traffic employees opened many of the vaults which would have been otherwise protected general mismanagement with the construction workers contracts and gsa oversight were also investigated ironically the government information and individual rights subcommittee had sent a letter the morning of the fire to address the issue of nitrate storage citing disturbing reports about the adequacy of the physical storage and preservation of documents in audio-visual materials nitrate films remained at the site and nars continued to secure and transfer what did survive andrew smith the former analyst with the national archive and records administration the service was renamed when became an independent agency in 1985 said in a blog post in 2018 that despite the tragedy the good faith effort by nars to protect the films is the only reason any of the films survive today and that what has survived has become one of the most heavily used collections in the national archives many older films from the silent era were simply destroyed deliberately as they were seen as having no commercial value the donation by universal and the effort put into saving and restoring those films was an admirable effort of preserving what has been left to us by the past the vaults were all demolished in the 2000s and all the remaining newsreel footage has been transferred to safer film despite its drawbacks nitrate films still see some use today and might not be as fragile as once thought paul spur who is an assistant division director with the library of congress noted that everybody assumed that all the nitrate film would be gone by the year 2000 but caches of nitrate film are still being discovered today and in fact some aficionados swear by the medium which they claim is bright and detailed in a way that other media simply isn't still the library of congress estimates that about 75 percent of the around 11 000 american silent feature films made from 1912 to 1929 are now lost this means that if for every film that we still have today there are about six more silent films that are gone forever the 1978 suitland fire helped to change and update the way the nitrate film was protected but it brings to light one of the sad and enduring facts of human history and the efforts of humanity to preserve that history that our connection to history is sometimes tenuous and that in a flash sometimes quite literally in a flash pieces of that history can be lost forever hi i'm miss history guy a co-writer for this channel an occasional presenter when topics present themselves that i'm interested in and the destruction of the great library at alexandria i've long considered it one of the greatest tragedies in history at its height the great library held historians estimate almost half a million scrolls it was a center of the intellectual and literary world it was a center for the production of great works of art it was a place where literary criticism was literally born and then it was gone the modern concept of a cataclysmic fire destroying the great library in one night is probably incorrect and the real history of what happened to the great library of alexandria is perhaps more tragic if not as dramatic and as history that deserves to be remembered in 331 bc alexander the great founded alexandria by egypt around a small egyptian town with the hopes of it becoming a center for greek influence in egypt when alexander died nine years later in babylon his enormous conquered empire immediately split into kingdoms ruled by his most important lieutenants of these successor kingdoms one was egypt ruled by alexander's general ptolemy the first soda or ptolemy the savior it was under the first ptolemy that alexandria became the capital of hellenistic egypt the earliest mention of the library is an unreliable source that credits its founding to the first ptolemy who ostensibly decided to build the library when the exiled philosopher demetrius of folium a great orator and student of theophrastus came to him with the idea theo frastus was a student of aristotle and thus the library was descended directly from aristotle's famous athenian school the lyceum this story creates a neat narrative but more thorough research has led most modern historians to believe that the library was not built until the time of ptolemy's son ptolemy ii and that demetrius played a lesser if any role this makes the date for the creation and dedication of the library unclear it was probably some time in the third century bc as early as 283 bc there may have been as many as 30 to 50 scholars at the library library itself was only a part of a larger research institution called the museum or the museum a temple to the muses complete with an appointed priest the institute even had a zoo described as having animals which had never before been seen and were objects of amazement the purpose of the institution was two-fold there was of course the goal of research and for the library the lofty goal of becoming a collection of all knowledge it was that the agents had at their disposal a large budget in order to to collect if possible all the books in the world more importantly to the rulers of egypt who were foreigners in a recently conquered land it was meant to show up their authority in the kingdom and show off the massive wealth and beneficence of their rule the great library was in the royal quarter nestled in the center of the city and near the great harbor a complete physical description of what the library looked like does not exist today but most historians believe that it wouldn't resemble anything like a modern library instead it was kind of like a colonnade of rooms all lined up next to each other and you wouldn't have even been able to find a book in this library as the texts were all written on papyrus scrolls the success of the museum in the library can be attributed to the ptolemies who began a vigorous policy of obtaining copying and patronizing writing translation and critical work the first four ptolemies who rolled from 331 to 205 bc were all intellectuals themselves and provided the library's most important resource money the museum was huge and extravagant and the ptolemies provided members with a salary food lodging and tax exemption this comprehensive benefit package drew the best minds of the holastic hillenastic world including euclid aristothenes who calculated the circumference of the earth and according to some sources archimedes to fill the library the ptolemy sent out royal purchasers armed with well-filled purses to purchase whatever books they could of every kind on every subject and the older copy the better older copies were prioritized because they had been copied fewer times and so were thought to have fewer errors ptolemy ii even decreed that all books found on ships at alexandria be brought to the library to be copied and translated into greek the only language the library kept books in the ancient historian gallon says ptolemy iii asked athens for the original copies of plays by ascholitz sophocles and euripides for copying which the athenians demanded 15 talents around 1 000 pounds of precious metals as collateral ptolemy iii had expensive copies made of the plays and then kept the originals and returned the copies telling the athenians that they could keep their talents it wasn't even clear how many texts the library held ancient sources vary in their numbers from as few as forty thousand to as many as seven hundred 000 scrolls in the great library of alexandria modern historians consider many variables when estimating how many texts were held there from how long it would have taken them to make copies to what was the length of the world's first catalogue it was by calamarcus and it was called pinakes and it has been lost to history the modern consensus seems to be the great library had between 40 to 400 000 scrolls at its height what is known as the collection was so large that it overflowed into daughter libraries also temples to the muses such as the nearby sarah palum in the early years of the museum the head position of librarian head librarian was one of extreme honor and the position was held by men of renown in learning such as apollonius of rhodes who wrote the argonautica the only surviving epic poem of the hellenistic period the most important accomplishment of the library was the standardization of translations like homer's iliad and odyssey which until then had existed in many different forms the library was also instrumental in the creation of literary criticism under the head librarian aristophanes poem was first organized into stanzas instead of written out like prose and textual marks were put over letters to indicate pronunciation scientists doctors and literary scholars gathered in alexandria as the beacon of intellectualism in the ancient world but this golden age of steady did not last the decline and fall of the library of alexandria went hand-in-hand with the decline of the ptolemic regime in the second century bc two ptolemaic brothers ptolemy filometer and ptolemy flycon bought over the throne widespread discontent led to interior instability and the whole of upper egypt revolted in 205 bc remaining more or less independent for 20 years the some leuked empire centered an antioch invaded egypt twice during this time once in 169 and again a year later the ptolemy brothers split the kingdom and when filometer died there was a scramble to put his son on the throne but zykon returned to marry his brother's widow and murder the boy to secure the kingdom for himself unfortunately for the library the head librarian had supported felometer son and in retaliation saikon expelled all foreign scholars from the city the expulsion and instability caused an exodus of alexandrian scholars to places all over the near eastern mediterranean leading one ancient historian to say that alexandria had become teachers to the greek and barbarian alike the scholars brought their knowledge and intellectualism with them founding schools or teaching in places like rhodes rome and the library at pergamum this unrest meant egypt's focus turned away from scholarship as later ptolemies struggled to secure their rule the position of head librarian rapidly lost prestige and with some ptolemies rewarding followers for the position whether they were scholars or not zykon even appointed one of his palace guards to it it would be another hundred years before the library burned in 48 bc julius caesar who was in the middle of fighting a civil war for control of rome was besieged in alexandria by egyptian elements of the ptolemy dynasty caesar was heavily outnumbered and to secure his position plutarch writes that he was forced to set fire to his own ships which after burning the docks then spread on and destroyed the great library the accounts of the great fire differ some estimate that almost 40 000 scrolls were burned while others claimed that only a warehouse near the dock that had been storing scrolls burned what is clear though is that the museum survived the fire the greek geographer strabo mentions visiting the museum decades after caesar's fire plutarch mentions that marc antony donated hundred thousand scrolls to cleopatra for the library from pergamon additionally possibly the most prolific writer of antiquity didamus akal centris was active in alexandria at this time purportedly authoring three thousand five hundred to four 000 works more than 100 years after the fire roman emperor domitian was said to have restored several other destroyed libraries by seeking everywhere for copies of the lost works and sending scribes to alexandria to transcribe and correct them all of this implies that while the city declined something of its glory days remained limping further into history even as this collection suffered from neglect alexandria's prominence continued to decline under roman rule the museum's membership rules became more lacks and the only known head librarian during the roman period was a politician and military officer with no known scholarly achievements the growing prominence of other libraries overshadowed alexandria's and several new libraries even opened in alexandria itself possibly stocking their shelves with scrolls from the older library mentions of the library and the museum seem to taper off around the middle of the 3rd century a.d again it isn't clear what this meant for the library itself or if the scrolls remained on the shelves or not if they were still at the library in 272 when the entire quarter of the city the library was in was burned when emperor aurelian captured the city from the palmyran queen zenobia and if the library did still exist and survived that attack it was almost certainly destroyed in the later siege by emperor diocletian in 297 still the daughter library of the sarah pium still existed though it isn't clear how long the temple held books it probably held the largest collection of books in alexandria during the third century and became a center for pagans and neo played in his philosophers after the empire became christian in 391 a.d a fight broke out after christians in alexandria desecrated some cult objects leading the pagans at the seraphum to take up arms and attack christians eventually the christians trapped the pagans in the temple and though the pagans were eventually allowed to leave the serapeum was destroyed it isn't clear that there were any books left at the temple as all contemporary sources talk about its collection in the past tense but if any books remained they were either destroyed or looted from the side several later iterations of the museum seem to have existed although it isn't clear where they were in the city or what collection of texts they may have had another source mentions a man of the museum named theon possibly the head of a school modeled after the original in the 5th century his daughter the pagan philosopher hypatia was head of the museum in 415 which is mentioned in extant letters and a powerful political personality in her own right her political relationships would eventually make an enemy of the bishop of alexandria however and several rumors aimed to harm her reputation led to a mob of christians murdering and dismembering her in a church if there was a museum at the time and if it had any text copied or transported from earlier iterations this attack would have once again threatened it especially if they were considered pagan authors there are even a handful of later sources that claim the library was only destroyed in or after 643 when the muslim khalif omar is alleged to have said if those books are in agreement with the quran we have no need of them and if these are opposed to the quran destroy them however these sources were written long after the fact and many modern scholars doubt their veracity many variables led to the downfall of the great library of alexandria and one of the most influential reasons it may have failed was that it lost its wealthy patrons we don't know what texts the libraries held or or when it was lost or or we do know that there are texts that were existed in that library that we don't have anymore one of the shining examples to me would be if we could find a copy of that lost catalog by kalamakis but it could be that that they were moved to a different library in in the fact of the matter is we just don't know the survival of any text relies much less on the existence of one copy and more on the long chain of copyists transferring the text before the scrolls degraded the papyrus scrolls were delicate things easily destroyed by water or insects if not cared for and centuries of neglect alone may have been enough to destroy the library's contents or the text may have been transported and lost many years later the library though had an enormous impact on history beyond the content of its text before the great library alexandria existed yes there were indeed libraries but after the great library of alexandria ceased to exist there were hundreds of libraries spread all across the mediterranean led by scholars who could trace their systems and methodologies back to what they learned at the great library of alexandria it's had an effect on libraries to this day there are approximately 350 000 libraries open across the world where people can come in and read preserved history and text that have been kept in a methodology similar perhaps to what they used at the library of alexandria i am a huge fan of public libraries i have previously worked as a librarian so i do know a little bit about preserving history for people who need to learn from it and so that we don't forget it and i believe that libraries and those who walk their halls deserve to be remembered i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 276,853

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: DZQ2gbxvAwY

Length: 50min 40sec (3040 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2022