This Technicality episode is brought to you by CuriosityStream.
Hey guys, I’m here, let’s get technical.
Have you ever seen this photo before?
How about this photo?
Ok, you’ve definitely seen this one before; it’s one of the 100 most influential images
of all time according to, well, Time.
Those photos and many more were taken on this camera: the Hasselblad 500EL.
This was the camera that accompanied Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins
on the first spaceflight to put humans on the moon.
Well, not this exact camera; two Hasselblad 500ELs were brought on the Apollo Lunar Module
— the part of the spacecraft that was actually on the surface of the moon — and both of
them were left there.
Why?
Well, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Making a camera that works on the moon is a mind-blowing feat of engineering and design.
Today, let’s learn about how this incredible piece of technology was made by answering
three questions: One.
Why was Hasselblad chosen to make this camera?
Two.
How did Hasselblad design a camera for use on the moon?
Three.
Was it successful?
Did it work?
Lesago!
Part the first: Why was Hasselblad chosen to make this camera?
To answer this, we first have to learn about this guy: Victor Hasselblad.
The year is 1940, the place is Gothenburg, Sweden, and we’re one year into World War
Two.
In the words of the famous economist and political theorist Bo Burnham, “War, huh, good God,
y’all.
What is it good for?
Increasing domestic manufacturing.”
And increase domestic manufacturing it did.
Even though Sweden maintained a policy of neutrality throughout the war, the country
mobilized and aided both the Axis and Allied Powers.
The Swedish government was able to get their hands on a Handkammer HK from a German plane
that crashed on Swedish soil.
The Handkammer HK was an aerial surveillance camera, and, upon acquiring it, Sweden realized
it’s probably a good idea to have some aerial surveillance protecting their borders, considering
a World War is going on and all that.
They approached then-thirty-five-year-old Victor Hasselblad to recreate the camera.
Victor had an impressive resume at this point.
When he was 18, his dad sent him away on a gap year (er, gap two years) where he traveled
the world and learned everything he could about cameras, from the factories that manufacture
them to the stores that sell them.
He then decided to open his own camera store in hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden, and all
of the information he learned combined with his entrepreneurial spirit made the store
massive success.
So, when the government of Sweden needed to recreate a camera, they knew the guy to call.
Victor took one look Handkammer HK and said, “No, I cannot make one like that, but I
can make one better.”
So, he made this camera: the HK-7.
The Swedish government was so impressed by his work, they hired him to make yet another
camera, the SKa4, a year later.
Additionally, knowing that the war wouldn’t last forever (er, hoping that the war wouldn’t
last forever), he began planning for when the government would stop giving him money
and designing a camera built for civilian use.
Indeed, many of the features incorporated in the HK-7 and the SKa4 (like interchangeable
film magazines and lenses) were built with the average Joe in the back of Victor’s
mind.
Let’s fast forward to 1961.
NASA is four years into Project Mercury, the goals of which were three-fold.
First, they wanted to put humans in orbit.
Second, they wanted to see how being in space affected humans.
And third, they wanted to bring everyone back safely.
Photography on Project Mercury’s first crewed flight in May 1961 was tricky, to say the
least.
While the spacecraft did have a camera mounted on its exterior, the ship had no windows,
so Alan Shepard (the one person aboard the flight) couldn’t take any photos of Earth.
What the ship did have, however, was a pretty distorted periscope, and, even then, Alan
Shepard said that the periscope was designed so whenever he looked at it, the pressure
gauge on his wrist would be forced to inadvertently bump into a nearby lever which would have
activated the Launch Escape System.
What is a launch escape system you might ask?
Well, you know ejection seats?
Okay, what if, in the case of a catastrophic launch failure, instead of ejecting the seat,
we just ejected the entire the entire part of the spaceship with the crew members?
This is life-saving if something goes wrong when the shuttle is launching because it allows
people to get away from the rockets as quickly as possible and parachute to safety, but it’s
really not something you want to have happen after you’ve taken off.
Granted, if Alan Shepard did hit that lever, it probably wouldn’t have done anything
because the Launch Escape System is usually disabled upon takeoff, but you can’t really
blame him for being, like, a little bit nervous.
Luckily, in the next flight, a window was added and this was fixed, but NASA still didn’t
allow cameras onboard until Mercury’s third crewed flight.
The one person aboard that flight, John Glenn, worked hard to convince NASA that a camera
was not an unnecessary distraction, but, instead, a very valuable thing to have.
NASA eventually caved, and, on February 20th, 1962, when John Glenn became the first American
to orbit the Earth, his Minolta camera was right alongside with him.
Hasselblad came back into the picture on Mercury’s fifth crewed flight.
OOOH no I just realized that’s a pun.
That line survived multiple iterations of this script for me to just now, just now get
that it’s a pun.
We’re gonna have to change that; gimme a second.
All this time, you might be wondering what Victor Hasselblad has been up to.
Don’t worry; he’s been busy.
He did indeed follow through on his goal to create a superb consumer camera, and the Hasselblad
name soon became synonymous with premium quality.
Everyone from fashion photographer John French to nature photographer Ansel Adams was raving
about Hasselblads.
Among the Hasselblad enthusiasts was NASA astronaut Wally Schirra.
Wally was chosen to be the crew member aboard Mercury’s fifth crewed flight, which launched
in October 1962, and the moment NASA saw some of the photos he took with his Hasselblad
500C, they made sure every future spaceflight was equipped with one of those cameras.
So, why *did* NASA love Hasselblad so much?
Well, on top of their phenomenal image quality and on top of their ease of use in a bunky
space suit, NASA loved Hasselblads because they only needed little to no modification
to function perfectly in the vacuum of space and temperatures of space (which can range
between -85°F (-65°C) and 250°F (120°C)).
When it came time for the Apollo program, NASA reached out to Hasselblad directly to
develop a camera for use on the moon.
They made this: the Hasselblad 500EL.
But, what makes this camera different from every other Hasselblad camera?
Part the second: how did Hasselblad design a camera for use on the moon?
YO WHAT’S UP GUYS, welcome back to my channel, and today, because you guys requested it so
much, I wanted to do a what’s in my bag video: Apollo 11 edition.
Now, the bag I’m using to carry all my gear is the Saturn V rocket.
This is a really nice, top of the line item; it’s got a lot of crazy specs like being
the tallest and most powerful rocket that has ever launched.
The Saturn V rocket launched the Apollo spacecraft.
Now, that spacecraft is divided up into 3 different compartments, but I personally like
to keep all my gear in the command module near the top of the whole operation.
By the way, I’ll be sure to put a bunch of Amazon affiliate links in the description
in case you wanna buy your own Saturn V rocket.
I got a pretty good deal on mine; it was around $6.4 billion, which
would be around $42 billion today, but I’m pretty sure it comes with free 2-day shipping,
so that’s nice.
The first thing in my bag is my daily driver.
Right now, that’s the Hasselblad 500EL.
On the left hand side here, there are two slots for batteries and on the right hand
side, there’s a place where you can plug in your Hasselblad.
Also on the right side here is a mode selector — my favourite modes are normal and automatic
— and also down here is a switch — o for normal operation, L to lock the camera and
shut off all of the electronics, and t is for timer.
Oh, this bit isn’t funny anymore?
Oh, it never was funny.
Aight.
Ultimately, eight cameras were taken onboard Apollo 11.
A colour television camera, a black and white TV camera, two Maurer film cameras, a Kodak
stereo close-up camera (used for soil documentation), and three Hasselblad 500ELs.
One 500EL would stay in orbit around the moon in the command service module, one would go
in the Lunar module but not actually go out onto the moon’s surface, and one would be
strapped to the chest of Neil Armstrong for use on the Sea of Tranquility.
That camera, the one that actually went on the surface of the moon, was called the 500EL
Data Camera, and it had some extra modifications in comparison to the classic 500EL.
Probably the biggest change was the addition of a Réseau plate or a plate with tiny engraved
plus signs on it.
This was added so the folks back down on Earth could easily calculate the distance and height
of objects on the Moon.
Unfortunately, the addition of the Réseau plate led to another problem.
See, when you wind film, it builds up static electricity.
On Earth, this electricity is no big deal; it’s easily dispersed by the metal in the
camera and the humidity in the air.
However, with the addition of the engraved Réseau plate and the removal of, well, air,
electric charge could easily build up between the film and the glass plate resulting in
a spark, which isn’t really something you want to have happening on a spaceflight.
Hasselblad knew they could solve this if they just directed the static electricity away
from Réseau plate and towards the metal in the camera, so they added a thin, transparent
conductive layer to the inside of the camera which led guided the charge towards the metal
and prevented sparking.
Other changes Hasselblad made to the Data Camera include painting it silver, which helped
keep the internal temperature of the camera down, and working with Kodak so that the size
of the film was 70mm (twice as big as the usual 35).
Wooh, okay, that’s a lot of 9000 iq design, but did the Hasselblads stick the landing?
Part the third: did they work?
Yes, the Hasselblads were a resounding success.
As Buzz Aldrin wrote in his autobiography Magnificent Desolation, “...the photography
on the moon was one of those things that we had not laid out exactly prior to our launch.
NASA’s Public Affairs people didn’t say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to take a lot of pictures
of this or that.’
Everyone was interested in the science.
So we did the science and the rest of it was sort of gee-whiz....
But those pictures became the storyboard of our adventure that the public got to see and
are now in history books.”
In total, there were just over 1400 photos taken on Apollo 11.
As we know, the most famous photo from the trip was Buzz looking at his arm.
Why?
Well, both Neil and Buzz were equipped with these cuff checklists reminding them of the
stuff they had to do in their over two and a half hours on the moon’s surface such
as sampling solar wind (where they used this aluminum panel and found that a lot of the
charged particles reaching the moon from the sun were ions of helium, neon, and argon),
and the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment (which measured the exact distance between the Earth
and the moon by bouncing a laser beam back and forth).
After they completed their experiments, it was time to go.
I told you at the beginning of this episode that the two cameras brought in the Lunar
module were left on the moon, and I wasn’t kidding.
Weight was of the essence and every ounce on the journey back had to be justified.
Once the film magazines were removed and securted, the cameras themselves were deemed unnecessary,
so they were left there.
Today, 12 Hasselblads in total have been left on the moon’s surface.
The first Hasselblad to actually make it back was on the Apollo 15 mission, and, back in
2014, it was sold for $910,000.
It blows my mind how, in just 8 years, NASA astronauts went from not even being able to
take pictures from inside their spacecraft because it didn’t have windows to taking
a picture of their footsteps on the Moon.
Maybe someday we’ll be able to get back the cameras that were left up there.
But, as it stands right now, somewhere out there in the Sea of Tranquility lies the cameras
that captured photos that changed the world.
Michael Collins: Jesus Christ, look at that horizon!
Neil Armstrong: Isn't that something?
Michael Collins: It's unreal.
Neil Armstrong: Get a picture of that.
Michael Collins: Ooh, sure, I will.
If you love space as much as I do and wanna learn more about the Apollo program, I recommend
checking out the documentary “The Apollo Moon Landings” on CuriosityStream.
CuriosityStream itself is an incredible documentary subscription streaming service with thousands
of titles for you to choose from.
Plus, and this is pretty cool, recently I made a subscription streaming service called
Nebula with a ton of my fellow educational YouTubers, such as CGP Grey, Wendover Productions,
MinutePhysics, Lindsay Ellis, and many more.
We wanted to create a platform that was by and for independent creators, so this is a
great way you can support the creators you love.
Not only does Nebula give you ad-free access to all of our videos, but we also have a couple
of original series like Working Titles where each of us make a video essay on the opening
title sequence of a show we love.
Lemme just say: I got one on BoJack Horseman coming out on October 11 sooooooo
Nebula usually costs $3 per month or $30 per year, but we’ve partnered with CuriosityStream
so you can both CuriosityStream and Nebula for just under $20 a year.
That’s amazing.
Name a more iconic duo I’ll wait.
But, in all seriousness, it was really cool to be able to build a streaming service with a bunch of people I looked up to as a child
and continue to look to this day. I mean, I guess I'm still a child, but, you know...
Go to CuriosityStream.com/Technicality to help out the channel and take advantage of
this offer today.
Thanks!
This episode was inspired by Deborah Ireland’s phenomenal book Hasselblad & the Moon Landing.
I’ll put a link to this book as well as all the other sources in the description as
always.
This episode, I’d like to give an especially big shoutout to my patrons over at patreon.com/technicality,
especially these amazing people on screen right now.
Thanks to your financial support, I can do things like buy an actual Hasselblad 500 EL
and use it in this video, something I definitely wouldn’t be able to do without your support
on Patreon.
So, if you think that added to the video experience and want to support me in my mission to create
high-quality educational content, it would mean a lot if you considered supporting me over at patreon.com/technicality
for as little as just $1. Thank you!
I'm still playing around with the Technicality upload schedule.
Right now, it looks like 1 video every 6 weeks for the rest of 2019 will work well.
Senior year is incredibly busy, and I've been going non-stop.
I feel... I feel like Alexander Hamilton, ya know?
*singing along to Hamilton* Man, the man was non-stop
*vigorous laughing*
Anyways, I'm super busy right now, but I think one video every 6 weeks will work.
We'll see. If it fails, that's fine, we'll learn.
Uhh but yeah. I hope to see you on November 18th
AND stay tuned for a special announcement coming before then; hint hint, I wrote a book.
Thanks for watching, DFTBA, and explore on.