• Died: Sep 28, 1997
• Occupation: Director
• Active: '80s-'90s
• Major Genres: Film, TV & Radio
• Career Highlights: Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, Vol. 3 - A Genius Recognized, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, Vol. 2 - A Star Without a Studio, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, Vol. 1 - From Vaudeville to Movies
• First Major Screen Credit: How to Make Movies (1918)

Biography

British television producer David Gill spent most of his career closely associated with director/silent film scholar Kevin Brownlow. Together the two created the highly successful Hollywood series that centered on the movie capital during the silent era. The duo also made three excellent biographical documentaries of the lives of Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton.

The son of a missionary doctor, Gill was born in New Guinea but raised in Cardiff, England, from the age of five. After WWII ended, Gill studied dance and then toured with the Sadlers Wells Ballet. He joined the newly founded Independent Television network in 1955. By 1968 he had begun making documentaries for their London weekday station, Thames Television. At this time, Gill was traveling the world covering its hottest issues. He and Brownlow were introduced by Jeremy Isaacs in 1975. In 1980, the pair presented a fully restored 280-minute version of Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927) and its tremendous success led to their launching a series of silents on Thames. Other notable projects produced by Brownlow and Gill include a mid-'80s British cinema series that presented the personal views of three prominent directors, Richard Attenborough, Alan Parker, and Lindsay Anderson. Gill and Brownlow eventually set up Photoplay Projects in order to help them offer more retrospectives of silent films. On September 28, 1997, as they were preparing a new project on 1930s horror films for the TNT network, the 69-year-old Gill suffered a heart attack and died. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 1 - The Pioneers Buy this Movie	Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 2 - In the Beginning Buy this Movie	Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 3 - Single Beds and Double Standards Buy this Movie	Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 4 - Hollywood Goes to War Buy this Movie
Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 5 - Hazard of the Game Buy this Movie	Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 6 - Swanson & Valentino Buy this Movie	Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 7 - The Autocrats Buy this Movie	Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 8 - Comedy - A Serious Business Buy this Movie

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Scottish astronomer (1843–1914)

Born in Aberdeen, Gill was educated at Marischal College and Aberdeen University. He was in charge of the Earl of Crawford's private observatory at Dunecht before becoming royal astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, where he remained until 1907. He was knighted in 1900.

Gill spent much time and thought on improving the accuracy of the astronomical unit (AU – the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun, one of the basic measurements of astronomy), then determined from measurements of the distances of Venus and Mars. In 1874 he went to Mauritius to observe the transit of Venus. The difficulty is that Venus, on magnification, presents a disk whose edges are not absolutely sharp, thus making it difficult to estimate the moment of first contact. In 1877 Gill went to Ascension Island to measure the distance of Mars using the distance from Greenwich as a base line. Although he obtained reasonable results he realized (as had Johann Galle) that a more accurate figure could be obtained if the planetoids were used instead for they came closer to the Earth and on magnification presented a starlike appearance. (This idea was taken up with great success later by Harold Spencer Jones.) In 1897, with the cooperation of astronomers in Leipzig and New Haven, Gill made a very accurate determination of the solar parallax.

His other main research was extending Friedrich Argelander's catalog to the southern skies. This began in 1882 when he photographed a comet and was impressed with the clarity of the stars visible in the background. Consequently he started photographing the southern skies, collaborating with the Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn. In 1904 the Cape Photographic Dorchmusterung was published cataloging over 450,000 stars to within 19° of the southern celestial pole.

(gĭl) , 1843–1914, Scottish astronomer, educated at the Univ. of Aberdeen. He made observations of the transits of Venus and Mars and investigated the solar parallax. As astronomer royal (1879–1907) at the Cape of Good Hope, he carried out the geodetic survey of Natal and Cape Colony and organized the geodetic survey of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He was a leader in the use of photography in the preparation of star catalogs. His photographic survey of almost half a million stars in the Southern Hemisphere (with J. C. Kapteyn) is known as The Cape Photographic Durchmusterung for the Equinox 1875 (1896–1900). This work extended Argelander's Bonn Durchmusterung to the South Pole. Gill was knighted in 1900. His writings include his History and Description of the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope (1913).