What was the treasure? Two trunks of projection equipment, magic lantern slides, and 10 reels of highly combustible black and white silent nitrate film from his great grandfather’s road show collection.

McFarland found out, from diaries, that his great grandfather, William DeLyle Frisbee of Deerfield Township, started touring in the late 1800s. Also known as “Professor Frisbee,” he presented his “exhibition,” at rural schoolhouses and churches all over northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio. The elements changed, over the next 30 years or so, but included, at first, hand-painted glass “magic lantern” slides, accompaniment from an Edison phonograph as part of an incidental sales pitch, and, eventually, silent, black-and-white movies on nitrate film. McFarland shared that he learned only recently that film is hazardous, prone to exploding and burning, even under water.

Over the years, those trunks were kept in the family, in storage in Pennsylvania, then Michigan. Wanting to preserve this unique piece of his family’s history, McFarland and his friend Dan Sorensen set out to find a home where the items would remain treasured, as opposed to ending up in a landfill. McFarland shared these treasures with antique stores, museums, online film forums, and even Ebay. People generally agreed that the movies were fascinating and precious, but weren’t interested in taking them off his hands.

Finally, at the suggestion of Sorensen, McFarland contacted the Debenham Media Group in Coraopolis, Pa., a company that scans and digitizes film of all kinds. They were taken there to be looked over and for the first time someone seemed to recognize and value them, and, most importantly, have a concrete, plausible suggestion for a home, at the Library of Congress.

Professor Frisbee

The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, a subdivision of the Library of Congress, was very happy to accept the donation, so McFarland and wife Mary traveled to the Packard Campus in Culpepper, Va. Kelly Chisholm, head of the Collections Management and Accessions Unit of the Moving Images section, along with her librarian Jason Groth, met the McFarlands and led a tour of the facility, a high-security bunker constructed during the Cold War for the Federal Reserve Bank.

It turned out that the trove of films included a copy of a 56-second 1897 film “Gugusse et l’Automate”–“The Clown and the Automaton”. The copy, now digitized and accessible online, is the only one known to have survived and is considered by some to be the first true science fiction film ever made.

The William DeLyle Frisbee Collection of 42 films has come to rest in a controlled 37º and 30% humidity hall vault, rather than a landfill. This was indeed the highlight of their trip to VA. Gratified, relieved, and even a little emotional, McFarland left them there, satisfied, knowing that his ancestors would all be proud.

McFarland said he was thankful for the professional genius and worldly wisdom of David Packard (as in Hewlett-Packard) and his son David Woodley Packard, who, he says, understood the importance of cultural preservation, bought a white elephant from the government, had it refurbished as an award-winning, state-of-the-art laboratory and storage facility (for $155 million), and then gave it back to the government, who hired people to labor quietly, literally underground, year after year.

Frames from"The Clown and the Automaton," thought to be lost, are pictured.

A ticket from "the show", along with four of W. D. Frisbee's diaries: 1887, 1889, 1890, and (inexplicably) 1934.

Bill and Mary McFarland are pictured after donating McFarland’s great grandfather’s silent film to the Library of Congress.