sign up. sunday night on q and e. founder and ceo of open the books. on how taxpayer dollars are spent and the need for transparency. >> last summer, we found that during a period where up to a thousand sick veterans died while waiting to see a doctor. the va spent $20 million on a high end art fort portfolio. 27 fo 27 foot christmas trees costing like cars. sculptures cost like homes. by a va center that serves behind veterans. it was a cubed rock sculpture with landscaping for $1.2 million. this is the type of waste that's in our government. >> sunday night at 8 eastern. on c-span q and a. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> on the phone with us here on american history tv is lynn smith, who is an audiovisual archivist at the herbert hoover presidential library and museum in west branch, iowa. you made an interesting discovery recently while working with the home movies belonging to president hoover and first lady lou hoover. what did you find? >> well, it was an interesting thing. i was working on evaluating the films, measuring for shrinkage and all of that. i noticed some of the black and white films had lines on each frame. i pulled it out to make sure i wasn't seeing things, seeing spots as it were, and noticed the edge code indicated they were code kodacolor which to med be like color film and you would see image of color in the frames, but they weren't. i looked further. the dates indicated they were, you know, early '30s, late '20s and did research and discovered kodacolor film was a precursor to kodachrome film. it existed from '28 to '35, and the design of these films, the mechanics of the film, the lines i was looking at were little, tiny, microscopic lens that would trap the color when filmed through a camera with a filter, a red, green, blue filter, developed and projected on a projector with the filter. that's where the color was seen. with the naked eye it looked like a black and white film with stripes. >> do you have that technology lying around? >> no, we don't. several years ago i had found or seen in an exhibit in oklahoma in a museum a kodacolor projector, but never gave it a second thought because i hadn't seen the films yet. but i -- whoever owned that camera at the museum, i'm sure they wouldn't let us use -- you know, run our film through their projector, and as the age of these films are 80-plus years old i would be hesitant to run the films through any projector, much less our own. i did additional research and discovered there's a lab in rockville, maryland that can digitally recapture and recode the color information that's trapped in these lens lines and make it color again. kind of restore the color. >> and these kodacolor films are part of a larger set of home movies, a big set at the library museum, correct? >> right. we have probably 150 or so of hoover home movies, dating from 1924 to about 1948 to '50, '52, somewhere in there. >> these koda color films, were they shot mostly by the first lady, lou hoover? >> some were shot by the first lady, others we're not quite sure. i could suspect they were taken by their daughter-in-law, herbert hoover jr.'s wife, margaret watson, because they're family films of their children, peggy anne and herbert hoover, iii, dubbed pete. you can see them in some of the films playing with their pet collie named ruby. another one peggy anne is rolling around with a little play stroller and playing with pete with a bucket, and i think looks like she is dumping a bucket of water on his head. not a very nice little sister but, you know, sibling rivalry starts early i guess. >> these really have the feel of a home movie. what's more, when you look at them from our perspective from 2017, they feel very new. it is almost like looking at the white house current day, scenes of the south lawn, et cetera. >> right. you see, you know, hoover and his cabinet members and some friends playing what would eventually become hoover ball. they're kind of tosing around a medicine ball on the lawn. you can see the eisenhower executive building before it was named eisenhower in the background. the rose garden, there's a scene where you see alonso fields, one of the butlers of the white house, posing with the flowers and mrs. hoover playing camp with their two dogs, wiji and pats. then the dogs run through a little reflecting pool and just having a good time. >> we noted that in that hoover ball scene that the president is playing in a natty looking sweater, running around. also in the scene where they're fishing out on the fishing boat, fishing in a suit. >> uh-huh, yeah. at that time mr. hoover always believed a gentleman should be properly dressed at all times. you wouldn't see him -- occasionally casual films of him fishing he would lose the tie, sometimes he wouldn't have the hat either, but he would tray it for hip waders and a fishing vest. >> where do you think that was shot? >> the film of him fishing off the boat is off the coast of florida, and it was taken in probably january or early february of 1929. he and mrs. hoover visited their long-family friends jeremiah and catherine millbank. he was a businessman from new york, and they met sometimes in the '20s and their friendship extended for an additional four decades. >> you mentioned the president's grandson, pete hoover. he's the one, i understand, that donated these films. is he still alive? >> no, mr. hoover -- pete hoover passed away in 2010. >> these seven films that are in koda color, this would have been new technology at the time. so lou hoover must have been on top of the latest technology, aside from being just interested in getting home movies she must have known about this early on. >> i think so, because the -- in 1924 is when her shift from still photos to movie -- home movies came in, and that was about the time movie cameras were being made available to public, just to buy and make your own backyard fun movies or whatever you're doing. so she jumped on that technology, and i think as a trained geologist and into the scientists as a graduate of stanford university, i think it was kind of the natural what's next, what's next, what's next. >> many people associate -- >> which is a logical progression. >> many people associate the hoover administration with the onset of the depression. what do you think these films and the larger collection in the library and museum, these home movies, reveal about president hoover and his family? >> i think it shows a lighter side of hoover. so often he was looked at as stiff, uncaring. you can see him interacting not necessarily in these seven films, but other of the films that we have, interacting with his grandchildren, playing with the family pets and just having fun just like any other father would really to his grandchildren that were, you know, five -- three, four, five, six years old at that time. and it sort of unmasks him as the stiff, uncaring individual. he loved his family and loved his grandchildren, and who doesn't love their own family and grandchildren? >> will visitors to the library and people online be able to see some of these new koda color home movies? >> yes. we have the koda color film, all seven of them, on our youtube channel in a play list, and then you can watch them any time we've got a little computer -- think it is an ipad or some little device in our museum that you push a button and you can watch the films in our museum. >> well, it's been a pleasure speaking with lynn smith, audiovisual archivist at the herbert hoover presidential museum in west branch, iowa. thanks so much. >> thank you, bill. sunday night on "q & a" adam

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