"Media always involve technologies. Understanding media means understanding their technologies. But little can be learned from just looking at redundant pieces of equipment. The rapidly developing approach of hands on history can open our minds to new perceptions of how media technologies work and how we work with them. Hands On Media History explores the whole range of hands on history techniques for the first time. It offers both practical guides and general perspectives. It covers both analogue and digital media; film, television, video, gaming, photography and recorded sound. Essays in the collection explore the difficult questions of reconstruction and historical memory, and the issues of equipment degradation and loss. Hands on Media History is concerned with both the professional and the amateur, the producers and the users. Essays outline the wide variety of approaches to understanding media history through its technologies, including the issue of fresh uses for old equipment and artefacts. Hands on media history offers a new perspective on one of the modern era's most urgent questions: what is the relationship between people and the technologies they use every day?"--