
Marion Stokes produced television in addition to being an activist for Black social justice. As per Stokes’s profile in Atlas Obscura, her archival project commenced in 1975 when she bought a Betamax magnetic videotape recorder. She started full-time recording on multiple VCRs in 1980, starting with two or three and eventually up to eight.
The Philadelphia Inquirer stated that she started sporadically taping television shows in 1976, despite the claims of many that she started recording in 1975. But her taping became constant at the start of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 when “she hit record and she never stopped,” according to her son Michael Metelits, who gave multiple interviews to the Inquirer. She was also strengthened by the establishment of CNN in 1980, which brought in an era of round-the-clock news coverage, with reporters following every move of a story in real time.
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, a 2019 documentary, states that she recorded for nine news stations up until her death in 2012.
Before “fake news” Marion was fighting to protect the truth by archiving everything that was said and shown on television. The public didn’t know it, but the networks were disposing their archives for decades into the trashcan of history. Remarkably Marion saved it, and now the Internet Archive will digitize her tapes and we’ll be able to search them online for free.
This is a mystery in the form of a time capsule. It’s about a radical Communist activist, who became a fabulously wealthy recluse archivist. Her work was crazy but it was also genius, and she would pay a profound price for dedicating her life to this visionary and maddening project.
Early in2013, rumors circulated that she possessed about 140,000 VHS tapes with news footage of political scandals, revolutions, and other events. The Internet Archive later updated this figure to 40,000 after starting to receive tape containers from Stokes’ family. Her son gave the tapes to the nonprofit organization, which is well-known for its extensive online archive. They intended to digitize all of the material and make it publicly accessible.
An update to a Fast Company report on the digitization process appeared in Poynter in 2014: “And no, as Fast Company and Poynter stated back in November, there aren’t 140,000 VHS tapes. Merely forty thousand. The relatives exaggerated.
Additionally, the Internet Archive updated Fast Company:
The Internet Archive received four shipping containers of Stokes’ tapes in December. After conducting a sample inventory, it realized that the family’s initial estimate of the number of tapes was incorrect. The collection is about 40,000 tapes large. “I think it’s daunting when confronted with many storage containers, 20- or 30-feet deep, to figure it out,” Macdonald says about why the mistake was made.
Between 1980 and 2012, Marion Stokes recorded every minute of US television on 71,000 VHS tapes. She had to buy nine apartments to store them.
— Quite Interesting (@qikipedia) May 13, 2021
Today, the tapes can be found in the Internet Archive’s vast collection in the following links:
Between 1980 and 2012, Marion Stokes recorded every minute of US television on 71,000 VHS tapes. She had to buy nine apartments to store them.
— Quite Interesting (@qikipedia) May 13, 2021
Roger MacDonald, the creator of the TV News Archive at the Internet Archive, spoke with us and provided us with additional current details about Stokes’ collection:
Our current best count of video cassettes in the Marion Stokes TV Archive is 71,716. Although each has notations on the spine indicating programs recorded and dates, we have not counted the number of programs, nor their durations.[…]We are looking forward to the time when we have sufficient funds to really making a dent in digitizing the vast collection and making it available online in our library.
Stokes’ archive is undoubtedly not the biggest of its kind worldwide. With “the world’s most extensive and complete archive of television news” and having “been recording, preserving and providing access to television news broadcasts of the national networks since August 5, 1968,” Vanderbilt University may hold that distinction.
Related Topic You Might Find Interesting:
- Story of Forrest Fenn and who he hid a bronze chest treasure full of gold and other jewels
- Jack the Baboon operated a railroad, earned a living, and never made a mistake
The Dartmouth Media Ecology Project lists UCLA’s Film and Television Archive as “the second largest moving image archive in the United States after the Library of Congress, and the world’s largest university-based media archive.” UCLA asserts that it has “the largest university-held collection of motion pictures and broadcast programming.”
According to some reports, Stokes’ archive is the largest known collection of television produced by a single person. Atlas Obscura describes it as “the only comprehensive collection preserving this period [of 30-plus decades from the 70s to 2012] in television media history.” Given that recording so much content from one’s own home was extremely unusual at the time, this assessment may be accurate. We are not aware of any other personal project utilizing this much historical video.

Remembering the 1945 Empire State Building Disaster: When a Plane Met Skyscraper
An airplane crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945. Among other damage, plane parts severed the cables of an elevator and the woman inside fell over 70 stories. She lived and holds the world record for the longest survived elevator fall.

Keith Sapsford: The Story of 14-Year-Old Stowaway
The final image of 14-year-old Australian Keith Sapsford, who aspired to travel the world. In February 1970, he sneaked into the wheel-well of a plane flying from Sydney to Tokyo. It opened mid-air & fell out. When a photographer was testing a new lens, he captured this moment on film and was surprised when it developed.

The History Behind the “No One Dies Alone” Program
In 1986, while doing a night shift at the hospital, Sandra Clarke, a registered nurse, was asked by an elderly patient to stay. She promised to be back after checking on her other patients, but by the time she returned, the gentleman had passed away. Clarke became one of the key figures in launching No One Dies Alone, a program that allows volunteers to sit with terminal patients who have no one else.

Blanche Monnier: Imprisoned For 25 Years For Falling in Love
Blanche Monnier, she was a French woman noted for her beauty, she wished to marry an old lawyer that her mother disapproved of, so she locked her in a small dark room in her attic for 25 years.

how Ferris wheel invented
In 1891, Chicago challenged engineers to create a structure to surpass the Eiffel Tower for the World's Columbian Exposition. George Washington Gale Ferris jr. responded with the original Ferris Wheel, a giant rotating structure elevating visitors above the city. This invention became an iconic attraction at the fair.

3 men lived on top of a billboard in tents for almost 9 months
From 1982-1983, three men in Allentown PA competed in a radio contest in which they lived on top of a billboard in tents. Whoever stayed up longest would win a house. Due to economic pressure from the recession, none of the contestants wanted to give up, so the contest lasted almost 9 months.

Thomas Baker's heroic act that earned him the "Medal of Honor" was 8 bullets until death
Thomas Baker instructed his team to leave him with a pistol and eight bullets propped up against a tree after he was injured. Later, American troops discovered the now-deceased Baker in the same location, lying next to eight dead Japanese soldiers and carrying an empty pistol.

The Day an Israeli F-15 Landed with One Wing: Zivi Nedivi’s Unbelievable Mid-Air Survival
Discover the astonishing true story of Israeli pilot Zivi Nedivi, who safely landed an F-15 after a mid-air collision tore off its entire right wing. Learn how skill, quick thinking, and the F-15’s unique design turned a disaster into a legendary feat in aviation history

15 interesting facts about Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II, who ruled Britain for 70 years, has away at the age of 96. She was the country's longest-reigning monarch. Here are some little-known facts about her.

Ancient Jericho: The First Walled City In History
The ancient city of Jericho is the world's oldest walled city, with evidence of stone fortifications dating back nearly 9000 years.

The Baltic Way: the longest unbroken human chain in history
On August 23, 1989, about 2 million people from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania formed a human chain that united all 3 countries to show the world their desire to escape the Soviet Union and the communism that brought only suffering and poverty. This power stretched 600 km.

A Brief History of the PlayStation Gaming Console
Sony's PlayStation was never meant to be an actual product. Instead, it was intended to be a CD-ROM console that would support Nintendo games. However, when Nintendo backed out of the deal at the last minute, Sony went ahead and launched what soon became one of the most successful gaming consoles of all time.

George Dantzig solved two famous “unsolved” problems in statistics mistakenly as assignment
In 1939, George Dantzig arrived late to his statistics class. On the board were two famous “unsolved” problems in statistics written as an example by his professor. Dantzig mistook the examples for homework assignments. He solved the “unsolved” problems and submitted the homework to his professor a few days later. His solutions earned him a doctorate.

Jack the Baboon operated a railroad, earned a living, and never made a mistake
A baboon worked as a signalman for the railroad in the late 1800s. He never made a mistake and worked for the railroad until the day he died.

Reason Behind The Suicide Of Christine Chubbuck Live On Air
Actor Rebecca Hall had serious reservations about tackling the macabre story around why Chubbuck killed herself in 1974. So what changed her mind?

Nathan's Famous Doctor Stunt
When Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs first opened in 1916, the owner hired people to dress as doctors and eat hot dogs outside his shop, to convince people his hot dogs were healthy.

Max Headroom Incident: America’s Creepiest TV Hack
In 1987 a man hijacked a television station during an episode of Dr. Who and wore a Max Headroom mask and uttered nonsense, and he still hasn’t been caught

Nordlingen, The Town Inside A Meteorite Crater With Millions Of Meteorite Diamonds
The German town of Nördlingen is embedded with 72,000 tons of microscopic diamonds. About 15 million years ago, a meteorite hit this region, and the impact created a massive depression and formed rocks containing diamonds, glass, and crystals. The town was built in the impact crater sometime around 898 CE.

Inside The Mysterious Death Of The Famed Gothic Writer Edgar Allan Poe
Hours before his death Edgar Allen Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore. He was incoherent, wearing another man’s clothes, and unable to explain how he got there. The cause of his death is an unsolved mystery.

Robert Odlum, the first person to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge
The first person to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge was a professional high diver who "wanted to demonstrate that people did not die simply by falling through the air, thus encouraging people to be willing to jump from a burning building into a net." He proved himself correct by safely falling 135 feet through the air and dying only when he hit the water.

Tunnels Dug by ancient giant sloths, A South American Megafauna
For years, scientists didn’t know what caused mysterious cave networks in South America. In 2010, they learned that the caves were actually tunnels dug by ancient giant sloths

Saudi Arabia camel carvings dated to prehistoric era
Archaeologists were shocked to discover that a series of camels carved into desert rock faces in north-western Saudi Arabia are actually prehistoric, dating from 7,000-8,000 years ago - before either the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge were built.

Underground Railroad to Mexico freed thousands of slaves in 1829
Slavery was abolished in Mexico in 1829. Slaves were escaping to Mexico, and slaveholders in the US were aware of this. The US attempted to get Mexico to sign a fugitive slave treaty, which would have required Mexico to send back escaped slaves to the US. But, Mexico refused, arguing that slaves were free as soon as they set foot on Mexican soil.

8 Interesting Facts About The Unsinkable Ship, TITANIC
If you ask your friends what's the most famous ship in history the answer in most cases will be the same, of course the legendary Titanic. Its history is full of mysteries, at first it was a source of hope and national pride as well as proof of the triumphs of mankind but it soon became a source of nostalgia and pain, the extent of which cannot be described in words.

Remembering the miracles of the 1985 Mexico earthquake (unbelievable stories)
In 1985, after an 8.0 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico City, nearly all newborn babies survived a collapsed hospital. They are known as “Miracle Babies” for surviving 7 days without nourishment, water, warmth or human contact.