The digitalization project "Reel History" has a long pre-history, which is not only interesting from an academic point of view. For some time the project was running with the name "History of the twentieth century in motion pictures - online for research", but as a matter of fact, the usage and demonstration of this, the oldest film material in the country, dates back to the 1960s and a man by the name Gardar Sahlberg.

He had since the beginning of the 1940s been employed at SF as a literary adviser, but held a great interest for the history of documentary film. In a memo "regarding Swedish Film Industry Reel Archive" dated "Filmstaden, Solna February 6:th 1962", he, for instance, pointed out that "especially the motion pictures provide a valuable complement to the literary and cultural history documents. It is also evident that people's awareness of images turns out to be developing fast. If today's audience is lacking awareness for what happened fifty years ago, it is possible that the audience will reach such maturity in the future, that they will watch a hundred year old newsreels with the same interest as they are now reading Svenska folkets underbara öden (a popular chronicle of Swedish history, widely read in the early 20:th century, translaters note).

The pedagogic factor also plays an important part here. If we let this material go to waste, the judgment of posterity can be hard."
The reason for the somewhat bitter tone in this memo is that Sahlberg was disappointed because the financial success of his compilation film När seklet var ungt (When the century was young) failed to come. The film had been produced by SF and had its opening in 1961.