THE National Film and Sound Archive is justly proud of its expertise and ingenuity in bringing old footage to life, but they’ve outdone themselves this time by building a custom-made device in order to digitise and publish a rare “Kinora” reel featuring 1901 footage of legendary cricketers K.S. Ranjitsinhji and C.B.Fry.

The NFSA has just completed digitising 1901 footage of Ranjitsinhji (also known as Ranji) and Fry, but first its whiz kids had to build a custom-made device to recreate the early 20th century “Kinora”, the world’s first home entertainment system.

They photographed all 465 frames in the reel, one by one, to create a 19-second film, showing the famous sportsmen who played for Sussex and England in the early 1900s in action.

The images had not been seen in more than 100 years—no wonder they’re pleased with themselves.

Readers can view a mini-documentary about this project, including the 1901 cricket film at http://bit.ly/kinora