A movie of the 1882 Transit of Venus sssembled from plates taken at Lick Observatory by David P. Todd

Anthony Misch and William Sheehan

We present a series of 141 photographic plates of the 1882 Transit of Venus, taken by David P. Todd at Lick Observatory. To our knowledge, the plates -- which were recently rediscovered on Mount Hamilton -- are by far the most complete photographic record of the transit. We also present the plates in the form of a high-resolution time-lapse movie, showing nearly all of the more than four hours of the transit visible from Mount Hamilton. The movie is notable for making visible an event that no living person has seen, but that has been lying dormant in the Lick archive for 120 years. The series also has a place of importance in the history of photography, and especially in the then-emerging art of chronophotography, the serial recording of a moving event.