This Former Nuclear Bunker Is Now Used To Preserve All Of America’s Film Reels

This Former Nuclear Bunker Is Now Used To Preserve All Of America’s Film Reels

Video: There’s a fascinating backstory about the building that is now the US National Audiovisual Conservation Center, which is where the Library of Congress stores all 6.3 million pieces of the library’s movie, television and sound collection. It used to be a nuclear bunker that stored $US4 billion ($5.3 billion) during the Cold War. Now, it’s a one-stop shop for all things regarding film preservation and restoration, with kilometres of shelves stacked with film reels to the ceilings; all sorts of machines that can repair film, process film and print film; and any sort of video player you can imagine to play any sort of format that ever existed.

It’s fun to take a tour of America’s film archive, which includes the likes of Casablanca and whatever movie Adam Sandler made recently. They have it all. They even house nitrate film reels, which are extremely flammable because they’re essentially rolls of gunpowder. It’s no wonder that the nitrate vaults look more like a maximum security prison than a Civic Video.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.