Fight On, Forever!

Reliving History Frame by Frame - National Endowment for the Humanities
...newsreels were shot on film made of nitrocellulose, the same material Thomas Edison and others used when first developing motion pictures in the 1890s. The film burned easily. Nitrate was sensitive to the slightest heat, even the heat of the film projector lamp. In the USC collection there are eleven million feet of film, seven million on nitrate and four million on more stable acetate. With support from NEH, the USC film library is transferring the nitrate film to modern polyester to retain the quality of the original stock...