Science Classroom

For three decades the 16 mm projector at the back of the classroom was the most important piece of educational technology in America, and the films it showed were made by an industry that no longer exists: Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, Coronet, the Jam Handy Organization, and the sponsored science units of AT&T and General Electric.

The Bell System Science Series is the best known. Frank Capra produced and directed the first four, mixing live action, animation and a "Dr. Research" host; Our Mr. Sun (1956) was the first and most widely seen. The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957) explains particle physics with puppets of Dostoevsky, Poe and Dickens; Gateways to the Mind (1958) covers the senses and The Alphabet Conspiracy (1959) linguistics. Hemo the Magnificent (1957), the episode on blood, is not yet available on the Archive in a usable copy; when it appears it belongs here.

General Electric's A Is for Atom (1953) is the classic animated introduction to nuclear physics, and The Atom and Biological Science (1952) its medical counterpart. The Britannica and Coronet approach is quieter: Sound Waves and Their Sources (1933), Principles of Electricity (1945), Battery Electricity (1957) and Preface to Chemistry (1952) are the films students actually saw, and Principles of Electro-Magnetism (1927), a silent classroom film, shows what the genre looked like before sound.

The Reel closes with three industrial explainers: How a Watch Works (1949), The Story of Television (1956) and Master Hands (1936), Chevrolet's symphony of the assembly line that the National Film Registry added in 1999.

Rights note: the Bell Science films were produced by AT&T and are widely circulated as unrenewed, but they were never government works. Popcorn lists them under review until per-title renewal searches are complete; the Britannica, GE and Prelinger titles carry public-domain marks on the Archive.