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I'm confused by this bit:

"...the scientists had recorded the images on magnetic tape, played it back on a TV monitor, then snapped photographs of the TV monitor. What he had were those images, sporadically placed along rolls of film as long as the wingspan of a Boeing 787."

Can someone elaborate on this?

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They did the same thing for the video from the moon. The feed from the lander was displayed on a TV in the control room,and then that TV was being filmed by a camera pointed at it. If I remember correctly it was to do with a different format than used by the US television, and lack of equipment which could covert such material in real time.

Sounds like Kinescope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope - But instead of capturing the full framerate of the original video like you would for TV, they only captured one frame per visible slice of land to save space

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