Periscope Film LLC

This episode of the Big Picture (a TV show produced by the Army Pictorial Center) TIGERS ON THE LOOSE is narrated by Lorne Green, features live WWII footage and interviews with commanders of the infamous 10th Armored Tiger Division (:28). It opens with the troops practicing their tank skills at Fort Benning (:38-:57) as the division was activated July 15th, 1942. Major General Paul Newgarden, its first commander (:58), died in a plane crash July 14, 1944. Captain John Drew ...Continue reading

This 1944 U.S. War Department training film (T.F. 8-1288) briefly discusses the devastation that can be caused by louse-borne diseases and shows how lice get into clothes and skin and the various ways soldiers can treat any lice infestations while at a base or in the field. The film opens with soldiers walking in a European city during World War II; other shots show troops moving through the rubble of a war-torn city. Viewers see a microscopic view of a louse (01:01). A nurse...Continue reading

This historic film shows a portion of the Kitchen Debate. The Kitchen Debate was a series of impromptu exchanges (through interpreters) between then U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959. For the exhibition, an entire house was built that the American exhibitors claimed anyone in America could afford. It was filled with labor-saving and recreational...Continue reading

This silent newsreel footage shows the opening of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. The Exposition was held in San Francisco. The PanamaPacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California, U.S., from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. The fair was cons...Continue reading

This short 1975 film from Rockwell International’s Space Division gives viewers a look at two of the NASA contractor’s projects in development: the command module for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and the Space Shuttle Orbiter. The film opens with a spaceship and launch vehicle at a launch pad; the rockets ignite, and the system launches into the atmosphere. Viewers see an animation of the unnumbered Apollo space craft that will link up with the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in Jul...Continue reading

Our time machine: these dream-like stills are taken from an 8mm home movie shot in Times Square vicinity in July of 1948. Enjoy!

This 1961 black and white film The Cotton Belt - Yesterday and Today was produced by the Indiana University Audio Visual Center. A woman stands at an ironing board and irons cotton clothing (:34). Fields of cotton are shown. A bole is spread apart up-close to show how it can stretched and then spun into threads and woven into cloth (:44-1:10). Cotton seeds are dumped into a cattle trough (1:12). A ladle scoops Snow-kreem Vegetable Shortening into a pan on a stove (1:15). ...Continue reading

Some of the mysteries of how divers are able to work underwater are unlocked in the color film, Diving for Science, produced by the United States Navy. The film, produced in the early 1970s, opens in the murky green below the waves with Navy divers exploring the watery depths while a narrator explains its importance from deriving protein to feed a growing population to creating the next generation of antibiotics. At mark 03:30 the viewer learns of saturation diving (deep-...sea diving in which the diver's bloodstream is saturated with helium or other suitable gas at the pressure of the surrounding water, so that the decompression time afterward is independent of the duration of the dive) developed by Captain George Bond, who is introduced at mark 04:00. A variety of scenes that test man’s ability to remain underwater for longer periods follows as Bond explains the various physiological barriers to deep-sea diving, including the dangers of losing too much body heat. Communicating under water is also important, which leads to a discussion of the use of a transponder (beginning at mark 09:25) which sends and receives sound waves and converts them into intelligible speech, and later how an acoustic navigation system helps divers see underwater while also giving them their true course and speed. Mark 12:45 introduces us to the Navy’s Scientist-In-The-Sea (SITS) program, a multidisciplined, full-time, summer-long, graduate credit program that exposed students to the underwater life-support and data collecting technology available at that time. The first course was offered in 1970, with the film dedicating several minutes to the program. (By 1976, 60 students from around the country had completed the program across five summers.) A visit to the Naval Coastal Systems Laboratory is next, starting at mark 18:30, where oceanographers were working on new ways to explore the ocean floor via simulated underwater environments. Such experiments will help expand the knowledge of mankind, says the narrator at mark 26:15, and day by day that knowledge is replacing the mystery which has shrouded the ocean since men first entered it. 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 like: "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 and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com

Made in 1943 during WWII, "Down Where North Begins" was one of many films made by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to encourage unity and cooperation among Latin countries and the United States. The film includes an overview of the geographic, economic, and social aspects of Ecuador: mountains, jungles, Riobamba, and Quito; farms, Indian handicrafts, volcanoes; pre-Inca and Inca ruins. This story is about Ecuador. Ecuador is the only country whose name...Continue reading

In this short promotional film by Zenith, the consumer electronics company touts the many advantages of its new color television sets. The film opens with a father taking his daughter to a Chicago Cubs baseball game (00:30), who are hosting the San Francisco Giants. His daughter’s reaction to seeing her first live baseball game, in color, causes him to make the decision to buy a color television set. Interviews with people on the street (02:29), who own Zenith productsincl...Continue reading

This 1960s color educational film about safely scuba diving is produced by the Los Angeles Department of Parks & Recreation. A Disney animation illustrates the history of creating a diving suit (:45-7:20). Scuba divers swim close to the camera. A woman diver’s face mask strap breaks and she panics. Her diving partner hands it back to her. They swim to the surface to a floating inner tube with a flag attached (7:22-9:25). An inexperienced couple wear advanced diving equipment....Continue reading

Made in the 1950s by Avion, a division of ACF Corporation, OPERATION PINPOINT outlines the use of a new horizontal position display, which was an innovation that allowed pilots to navigate with relative ease. It's unclear whether this display was ever adopted or deployed, as we've been unable to find references to it on the Internet. If you know about it -- let us know in the comments! According ot the film, the display was developed with Wright Air Development Center's Fligh...t Control Laboratory and Avion. It allowed an unprecedented degree of accuracy. At 2:60, a large glass slide containing a transparent map is shown, representing an area larger than the continental USA. With the Horizontal System Display (HSD), the aircraft's position could be shown in real time, with the map moving with relation to X-Y co-ordinates. At 5:20, the television relay system that serves as the heart of the unit is shown with its 1" tube capable of displaying 600 lines of resolution (slightly less than a home TV system). At 5:44 a slide rule is shown on the desk of an engineer who is prepping the HSD system. At 6:48, a pilot is shown flying with the use of the HSD system on board an F-86 Sabre. At 8:20, new ideas are shown for the HSD including using it to display sector scan radar, velocity data, terrain clearance, landing aids, and other information that would now (in modern times) be shown on a heads-up display. 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

Made in the 1960s as part of the "New Horizons" series of promotional films, this Pan Am color travel film promotes visits to the new South Asian Republic of Pakistan. (The film was made prior to the separation of East Pakistan into the nation of Bangladesh in the early 1970s, but primarily concentrates on West Pakistan). The films opens with a contrasting view of a pokey ol’ camel lumbering through the heart of a modern city, Karachi, which is the main seaport and fina...ncial center of Pakistan. (Pakistan was created in 1947 as an independent nation for Muslims.) The film shows its viewer many beautiful sites around the city as well as the lines of ships docked at the harbor, which we are told bolsters the nation’s economy. Airlines are also aid the economy, as mark 02:20 shows the viewer a PanAm jet with debarking tourists and cargo. Moments later, the film shows tourists frolicking in its warm waters. Most visitors of the fragile sex avoid a camel ride, but some folks must try everything once, the narrator says as young women mount a beast of burden. They’ll remember this ride. It will be a sore subject with them for a long time. Others prefer boating or deep-sea fishing on the Arabian Sea, or visits to the Khyber Pass or Himalayas. The bustling city of Peshawar is seen at mark 04:30, which the narrator describes as one huge shopping center with a variated mixture of sounds of smells, as men and women are shown creating and selling their wares. Other sites shown include the Tomb of Jahangir (mark 07:30), a mausoleum built for Jahangir, who ruled the Mughal Empire from 1605 to 1627, Sheesh Mahal (The Palace of Mirrors) constructed in the early 1630s, and Badshahi Mosque in the city of Lahore. With its rich history, the narrator concludes that Pakistan is a country that close at hand, thanks to air travel. 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 like: "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 and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com

This exciting promotional film for Pan Am's new "double deck Clipper", the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, was made in the last 1940s as the airplane entered worldwide service. Although the film is extremely persuasive about the aircraft's capabilities, the 377 was a disappointment for Boeing with only 55 aircraft plus prototype built before its production was cancelled. The plane suffered from a poor safety record (including a crash-landing at sea in the Pacific documented elsewhe...Continue reading