Flea Market Discovery 1906 Lost Video of San Francisco Earthquake.

1906 At dawn in April, a sudden earthquake shook San Francisco. Half a minute later, the biggest earthquake in California history hit the sleeping city and woke it up. Modern geologists estimate that the magnitude of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake is between 7.7 and 8.3. Shock waves from the earthquake and subsequent fires destroyed 28,000 buildings, killing at least 700 people and leaving more than half of the city's 400,000 residents homeless. [Lost video: shocking still images after the San Francisco earthquake]

Now, after losing 100 years, the video of the devastating consequences of the earthquake has appeared. In order to bring hope to treasure hunters everywhere, photo collector David Silver found a rare nitrate film in the trunk of a car in a flea market in California. According to Silver,

It's a miracle that the 9-minute film is still intact; Nitrate film is very fragile and easy to burn. Silver, who sells movies, told SFGate: "Standing there with a lit cigarette in his mouth, watching through the lens.

With the help of a Facebook organization called Memory of San Francisco, Silver sold these photos to Jason Wright, a photographic historian, who had a hunch about the origin of this rare film.

"It sounds like an important movie," Wright told Life Science. Maybe it's a long-lost movie by the Miles Brothers.

The Myers brothers are film pioneers in San Francisco; What they are most famous for today is a 12-minute movie called Travel along Market Street. This short film, shot at 1906, perfectly captures the bustling life in downtown San Francisco from the perspective of a moving cable car. 20 10, film historian David Kiehn confirmed that "Travel along Market Street" was shot four days before the earthquake.

"[The Miles brothers] took more photos than anyone after the earthquake, almost 7,000 feet," Keane told SFGate. Almost no one lives.

The newly restored container is a surprising exception. Wright brought this new film to Keane, and he helped to make sure that it was really a lost Myers Brothers film-it was shot a few weeks after the 1906 earthquake. In the post-disaster video,

The filmmakers' brothers walked down the market street along a road similar to their previous works. But Wright said that what used to be a road with magnificent buildings and prosperous businesses has now become a ruin, full of rubble and refugees. Smoke and ashes blocked the air. The half-collapsed building was blown up, while onlookers watched numbly. Wright said: "When you saw the trip in Market Street two days before the earthquake, there were people everywhere, and children were laughing and running around on the road." Little did they know that in just four days, many people would die, many smiles would disappear and many buildings would disappear.

Wright and Keane are currently working hard to restore and digitize the video, and they plan to exhibit it in San Francisco on April 14. Wright said that the restored video will be released online later this summer.

Originally published in the journal Life Science.