Dating to 1930, “Purifying Water” is one of the early, silent educational films made by Encyclopedia Brittanica. EB films would continue to produce films for many decades. The film combines animation with footage to show how water is drawn from a lake (:20) and moved to the city via a pipe and pump system. At :52 a large city pump station is shown. At 1:07 sediment is shown in the water being removed by settling tanks shown at 1:38. At 2:02 the film mentions that chemicals can also be used for settling such as aluminum sulfate. A lab experiment using the chemical is then shown. At 2:53 water is filtered through sand and gravel to remove impurities. At 3:41 an experiment is conducted to show filtration of water which enters fouled at the top and at 4:51 is absolutely clear. At 5:09 a water pumping station is shown in miniature. At 5:50 sand and sediment are removed from a settling pond. At 6:12 the flow of water is reversed to clean the filter beds. At 7:28 a home with a house drain and barnyard drainage is shown. At 8:00 a safe well is shown with a hand pump. At 8:51 a title card mentions that chlorine can be used to destroy bacteria and a laboratory set-up is shown to demonstrate this. At 9:30 chlorine is introduced into a water main. At 10:21 water samples are shown being tested on a daily basis. At 13:08 water samples on petri dishes are removed from being stored 24 hours, and the bacterial growth examined. The film ends with footage of a water treatment pond in operation.
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com