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Handy (Jam) OrganizationAluminum on the March (Part II) (1956)

How aluminum contributes to everyday living and national defense: appliances, packaging, airplanes, etc. With great stop-motion animation and excellent imagery of aluminum-enabled Fifties America.


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Producer: Handy (Jam) Organization
Sponsor: Reynolds Metals Co.
Audio/Visual: Sd, C
Keywords: Metals: Aluminum; Animation: Stop-motion; Design: Industrial

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: jgruszynski - - March 24, 2009
Subject: An excellent film and still timely
I'm not quite sure what would be expected by other reviewers but fundamentally aluminum really is pretty close to being as wonderful as suggested in this film. Maybe science education has reached a nadir that precludes the appreciation and understanding of such films like this or of engineering and industrial materials like aluminum. That is was precisely the point of many ephemeral films from the 1940s and 1950s though: educating people about science, technology and the new possibilities.

As an engineer, I can tell you there's only a handful of technical details about aluminum itself, its production and applications described in the film I'd have any quibble about in terms of strict accuracy and those are only corner cases. The uses have greatly expanded beyond those described but all described are still true.

Aluminum use in household wiring is an obvious historical case of such a quibble from the 1970s and 1980s experiences. Aluminum *is* still used routinely in electricity distribution and components. The only indirect issue arises from the phrase "low voltage applications" which refers to residential and industrial 120V wiring and components.

Any electrician or engineer will tell you that the problems that arose with aluminum wiring only arises from sloppy installation. Because it was "discovered" we couldn't rely on installation quality broadly, electrical codes simple restricted it as the simplest solution. Strictly you can generally still use aluminum but it has code requirements. So it's the human element that triggers the problem. That's part of the whole utility issue about any technology, mind you, so human error isn't entirely the fault of end or penultimately users.

Should Reynolds or Alcoa have know this would become a problem? Realistically no. Not unless you can control time and space and travel in time. Knowledge accretes emergently - it doesn't spring fully constructed like Athena from the skull of Zeus. This is the standard delusion of legislators and academics. And you have to remember that aluminum production was very small before WWII.

Some people refer to metal foil as "tin foil" rather than "aluminum foil" precisely because the metal tin was used more often in the early 20th century due to cost. And tin is not that cheap. WWII and the need for aluminum for military aircraft changed the production intensity and scale of aluminum in the US. The conversion of wartime consumption to civilian consumption created a veritable glut of aluminum and the price plummeted even for ore-made aluminum. Recycled aluminum probably didn't make much sense in the 1950s because of this.

This film was made only a decade after the war. The economic change in aluminum price and availability colors how engineers and businessmen viewed the applications of this newly abundant commodity. The simple fact is that you can never know every consequence or cover every assumption sufficiently to attain zero or even arbitrarily low risk instantly. Folks who thing you can are dangerous fools. For more dangerous that those who try to use new technologies.

It would be a timely update to go into the implications of the electricity required to produce - with Peak Oil, this is a very significant issue. But it was the Arab Oil embargo that closed plants on the gulf coast mentioned in the film, and why most US aluminum plants were moved to be near hydroelectric electricity sources since this film was made. In the context of the 1950s, however, people were talking about electricity that would be "too cheap to meter" because of atomic power, so you can hardly fault them retrospectively - hindsight is always 20-20 and it's a cheap shot.

Today, locate the large rivers and hydroelectric dams of any nation and you'll find the plants for aluminum (and magnesium, copper and other electrolytically refined metals) and the plants for reduction refined metals (like titanium) which consume aluminum or magnesium to refine from ore. Who knows what Peak Oil may bring to this next?

Of course, how else would *any* vendor sell or present their product but with a self-congratulatory enthusiasm found in this film. The fact that the technical details about the product are predominantly true makes it that much easier to genuinely *be* as enthusiastic as seen.

Add the fact that aluminum prices after WWII had dropped like Moore's Law drops computing costs today and I can only wonder what the misunderstanding is. In the opposite case, when you make or sell something that you, yourself, can't believe in, then these kinds of stories are hard to swallow particular by the storyteller. I wonder what business the other reviewers are in during their day jobs.

Watch an Apple computer ad and ask if the enthusiasm level any different and any less justified. Apple *knows* their products have the value they claim. They express the same enthusiasm when they pick "Music is my Hot Hot Sex" from Cansei de Ser Sexy for a broadcast iPod ad, for example. Their customers agree - Apple buyers are known to be "fanatical" about the products. And the same critics come out of the woodwork, probably for the same reasons.

"Music is my Hot Hot Sex" by Cansei de Ser Sexy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8lcnzWCKpQ

It may sound crazy to say that Reynolds Aluminum was the Apple of the 1950s but it's really not that far off the mark.

Reviewer: Spuzz - - December 21, 2002
Subject: Never Ending March Of Aluminum
(full film) Totally overwrought self tribute to Reynolds gives up everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that Aluminum can be churned into. Bars! Wire! Cars! Aluminum foil! The list goes on and on (and on). The first half of the second part is the best though, as it explores packaging, and some great examples of 60's food products are shown. Also great, it's incorperation into fashion. The stop motion effects are also worth noting, but the rest is just too much. "And this is not the end" will surely bring a groan.

Shotlist

Live location photography, stop-motion and special effects chronicle an industry that contributes to everyday living and national defense. The documentary opens in the mile-high bauxite mines of Jamaica, from which the bauxite ore is conveyed over an aerial tramway to waiting ships, then carried to a factory. At the factory, the ore is digested, settled, washed and "unlocked" from the earth. Emerging as a snow-white powder, the "alumina" is used for soil conditioning, as an abrasive and for conversion to solid sluminum at reduction plants through the electrolytic process. To vivify the versatility and flexibility of the metal, the film employs "marching" ingots, blooms, billets and extruded shapes.
Rapidly, the film pictures aluminum applications in car styling, home appliances, packaging, "Reynolds Wrap" for cooking and preserving, as a "do-it-yourself" material, and as the key metal in jet airplanes, Diesel engines, buses and heavy industries. The ease with which aluminum can be handled is demonstrated in a sequence showing a farmer using it for siding and insulation and to irrigate a field. The piping in this scene is shown to be highly portable, being moved in sections by one person.
In a "pageant of packaging" the film presents row on row of familiar brands parading in step to stirring martial music, against a background of brilliant colors. ALUMINUM ON THE MARCH concludes that more products will join the parade, that this definitely is not "The End." [Business Screen 17:8, 1956]

Quite beautiful film propagandizing on behalf of aluminum.



Ken Smith notes: This is a beautiful industrial, complete with outstanding photography, lighting, and a great score. Sprinkled throughout are animated sequences that show an aluminum man and his metallic minions lurching across the screen in military parade fashion as "aluminium marches forth." We witness every step of this "breathtaking journey," as primitive aluminum ingots are transformed into "modern, smart-looking delivery trucks" and plain-Jane aluminum foil adds "the gleam of glamour to milady's gown." Truly, bauxite never looked so good. Sponsored by the Reynolds Metals Company, of course. (KS)
Stock shots:
stop-motion animation of aluminum ingot etc.;
bauxite mine in Arkansas and explosion; use of foil in packaging;

excellent shot of supermarket shelves;
wonderful Video Quick frozen TV dinner package;

PRODUCTS BUSES BUILDINGS HOMES INDUSTRY ASSEMBLY LINES LEISURE MARCHING CARIBBEAN MINING BAUXITE ORE MACHINES HOUSEWORK FANTASY Aluminum Industrial films Stop-motion animation Animation Surrealism Metals Manufacturing Barbecues Foil (Aluminum) Kitchens Refrigerators Appliances Women Kitchens Housewives Packaging Food Fireworks Offices Popcorn Jiffy Pop Jamaica Bauxite Mining Workers (Foundries) Workers (Women) Trailers (House) Cooking Explosions Metallurgy Supermarkets Consumerism TV dinners Television dinners Children Pots and Pans Cooking utensils
Voiceover:
"In order to ensure a constant and uninterrupted supply of this raw material [bauxite], Reynolds some years ago pioneered the development of aluminum ore deposits in Haiti"

"This never ending march of aluminum continues, an ever growing parade supplying the thousands of parts which form the products of today and the better products of tomorrow."