Video quiz: Figure out when these old home movies from the Prelinger Archives were filmed.

Quiz: Can You Tell When This Vintage Home Movie Was Filmed?

Quiz: Can You Tell When This Vintage Home Movie Was Filmed?

Playful puzzles.
March 30 2016 12:22 PM

Can You Tell When This Vintage Home Movie Was Filmed?

1955? 1965? 1975?

160330_QUIZ_Home-Movie-Prelinger
When was this moment captured on film?

Internet Archive

The Prelinger Archives is a trove of more than 60,000 “ephemeral films.” There are ads, industrial demonstrations, educational tapes—and about 12,000 home movies, some made as early as the 1920s. About 1,000 of those are available online at the Internet Archive. For this installment of our weekly quiz, we’re sharing a few of our favorites with you and asking you to guess when they were made. You’ll be able to tell by the fashions, the film quality, and, in some cases, the unfolding of major historical events on tape. These clips are sweet and saddening, both a memento mori and a reminder of shared humanity across 10 decades. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Correction March 30, 2016: The interactive in this article originally misstated the date of the event depicted in the 10th question.

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Correction, March 31, 2016: The interactive in this article originally misdated two clips, the dates of which have been corrected. It misidentified the first year of availability of color film for home movies. Additionally, it misdescribed "home movie cameras" as "home video cameras" and an airplane as a "jet plane."