“A Product of the Imagination” is a 1950s color film by Alcoa that includes a number of splices (and places its introduction at the 08:00 mark) but is designed to educate the viewer on the soft metal aluminum. Dramatic music plays in the background at the physical beginning of the film as several various factory scenes are shown and the narrator explains how aluminum can be extracted and fit into any number of molds. The film shows several of those forms before the narrators — “Adam and Eve” — move into a discussion of bauxite, the principal ore of aluminum (mark 02:15), and how it is transformed into a compound called alumina (aluminum oxide). There are scenes from aluminum reduction plants as they film outlines obscure facts about the metal. Carbon, a byproduct of the aluminum manufacturing process, is used to create diodes and other products, as shown beginning near mark 04:55. By mark 07:00 the film glimpse “into the future” to see potential uses for the lightweight metal moving reaching the “start” of the film at mark 08:00 and a discussion how life was “in the beginning” for the Biblical figures of Adam. Eve appears on the scene at mark 08:52. But just as quickly as the characters are introduced, an awkward splice returns the action to “present day” at mark 09:38 and a scene of a farm carrying an aluminum irrigation pipe. A few seconds later the camera pans up the exterior of the Alcoa Building in Pittsburgh — “thanks to aluminum the lightest building of its kind ever built” — and at mark 10:00 we see how the windows rotate 360 degrees so they can be washed from the inside. Aluminum is used in aircraft and railways, we are told, as well as in trucks, baby strollers, highway signs, and fences. “As a woman, you’ll want to know that aluminum is non-toxic and can be used for easy-to-clean pots and pans,” Adam boasts at mark 11:25, plus flat irons, refrigerators, and ice cream scoops. “Aluminum. The most widely widely adaptable metal of all time,” he adds at mark 13:29, leading to an explanation of how aluminum can also be used in the construction of a dam. By mark 16:09, the narrator reminds us how aluminum will be used in the “world of tomorrow” as a montage of aluminum products are displayed before the film comes to an abrupt end.
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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
