Sir David Attenborough is appealing for help to find missing episodes of the Christmas Lectures, the first science show broadcast on national television.
People are being urged to help unearth past series of the lectures from the Royal Institution (RI), described by Attenborough and other previous lecturers as “national treasures from a golden age of broadcasting”.
The incomplete BBC archive of the broadcasts is being made available on the RI website for the first time, but 31 episodes broadcast between 1966 and 1973 are unaccounted for. Included in the misplaced episodes is footage of Attenborough not seen since it was first broadcast 50 years ago.
The Christmas Lectures have been delivered every year by the RI since 1825, making them the longest-running series of scientific lectures in the world. In 1936, it became the first science programme broadcast on TV. They are the second longest-running continuously broadcast science TV show.
This year’s lecture will be given by Prof Alice Roberts, a biological anthropologist and broadcaster, exploring genetics and identity. She will speak about humans’ evolutionary past and the ethical challenges that need to be overcome to ensure science is used for the benefit of society.
Though the missing lecture episodes are officially believed to have been lost, the BBC and RI believe individuals may own copies made during the early days of video recorders.
Sarah Hayes, the head of BBC Archives, said: “I don’t think the importance of finding these broadcasts, to make them available again for new generations, can be overstated. They are to science what the missing Doctor Who episodes found a few years ago are to science fiction.”
Among the other missing lectures are those delivered by Eric Laithwaite, John Napier and the Nobel prize-winning chemist George Porter.
