The unlikely technological pairing of film's earliest silent format with DVD has proven a boon for Senior Lecturer Martin Marks of the music and theater arts section.
He composed the music and wrote the notes for 50 newly restored silent films included in the National Film Preservation Foundation's set of four DVDs -- "Treasures of American Film Archives" -- which was called the "best set of the year" by Peter M. Nichols of the New York Times.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on January 10, 2001.