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Handy (Jam) OrganizationMore Power to You (ca. 1930s)

How oil is drilled, transported, refined, reformulated, and consumed. Narrator: Lowell Thomas.


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Producer: Handy (Jam) Organization
Sponsor: Unknown
Audio/Visual: Sd, B&W
Keywords: Oil industry; Occupations: Oil workers; Chemistry

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: Spuzz - - November 12, 2003
Subject: Hand Grease
A thankfully simplified version of how oil is found and pumped into your home, the film has the most basic and educationally helpful description of how an oil well is drilled. Is also tells of how important pumps are and how the oil gets to the refineries. After that, well, whenever films talks of cracking, my eyes usually glaze over. But nevertheless, a very good film from Jem Handy.

Shotlist

Old DC-3 ? airplane flying
3-stack ocean liner
2 shots of passenger trains in motion
aerial flyover huge oilfield with many wells (great)
oil wells
VS drilling sequence: rotary drill motor, steam engine driving drill, inserting length of pipe to lengthen stem; drill lowered from tower; animation showing drill bit through different subterranean strata and reaching oil sand (porous rock)
Animation: lowering casing, oil flowing up through screen and pipe to surface
Cleaning out well Ð blowing out junk over landscape
Rocker arm pumping oil
24-well hookup Ð 24 wells being pumped from one motor
VS oil pipelines and tanks
Aerial over rural pipelines and pumping station (good)
Aerial of storage tanks (good)
Aerial of oil port, aerial of tanker under power
Aerial of refinery (Bayonne?)
VS Tankers and ships, unloading oil
Aerial of tank farm
CU bubbling beakers doing lab tests
Aerial refinery stacks
VS boilers, fireboxes, steam, gauges, etc.
Worker with distinctive face rotating wheel
Fractionating towers
Explanation of how refinery works
VS refineries
Good aerial over refinery
Pan down over stacks and refinery
Animated motion diagram of a cracking plant
Animation: magnified view of long petroleum molecule wiggling under heat and flying apart (great abstract/trippy stuff)
Smaller molecules (gasoline)
Operation of bubble tower (animated)
Five scientists in complex experimental laboratory filled with glass apparatus
Classic shot of chemist holding tube/vessel up to the light and looking through it
VS lab shots with woman lab tech and lots of glassware
Aerial tank farm (good)
Sun Oil tank cars
Aerial of pipeline over mountains
Man pumping gas (CU) into very shiny 1930s car
End