The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

406 School Department The Educational Screen School Slides of Quality on All Subjects. Many stock slides, also special slides made to order at a very reasonable price. W. C . BLI VEN 40 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, N.Y. (Show Room 130 West 42Dd Street, New York City, by Appointment) Victor Stereopticians — Spwt Lights — Motion Picture Machines the miracle of modern photography become perfectly clear the exact processes of plant life, which — because they happened so slowly — could only be guessed at, previously. Beasts of Prey (Vitagraph) — One of the Urban Popular Classics and devoted to showing representatives of Carnivora, as they may be seen at the National Zoological Park, Washington, D. C, and the Zoological Society of Philadelphia. The reel is distinguished by some splendid photography of the animal subjects— many of them seen at close range. There is good informational material in the titles, which are uniformly well written. The lion, Bengal tiger, leopard, lynx, jaguar, mountain lion, the cheetah, hyena, wolf, coyote, red fox, raccoon, and badger are represented — along with many others — and in the majority of cases are "caught" by the camera in some characteristic act — such as the scene which shows the red fox burying his food, the raccoon washing his green food in the pool before eating, and the otter catching a fish. A reel to be enjoyed in the same spirit with which one visits a Zoo — and perhaps particularly entertaining to a young audience — although much of the titling is too difficult in phraseology for any except adults or older children. Splendid material, especially for the thousands who seldom have the opportunity of visiting the zoological parks of our larger cities. INDUSTRIAL Making Telephone History (De Vry Circulations)— Hardly is there anything more absorbing than the romance of the development of our modern means of communication. Within the memory of most of the present generation the telephone has come into general use, and so accustomed have we become to its convenience, that we seldom think of a time when it was unknown and undreamed of. This reel, made by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, traces the history of its development from the first model in Bell's research laboratory of 1875, through the many stages of evolution in form. The attic workPlease Write to Advertisers and shop of those days is contrasted with the modern telephone laboratory, and the first crude switchboard (New Haven, Conn., 1878) seems primitive indeed beside the modern switchboard of today. Overhead wiring is shown to have been displaced by the 18,760,000 miles of underground cables today. A most interesting scene shows the putting up of an overhead cable, and a close view of the cut end of a lead cable discloses the hundreds of individual wires insulated and sealed within it. Graphs bring out a summary of growth in the number of telephones in use — and scenes show the laying of the world's greatest telephone cable (1921) from Havana to Key West. A fitting climax comes with the contrast between the epoch-making long distance conversation, of 1877 between Boston and Salem, and that which took place 45 years later, when on Armistice Day, 1921, the President spoke from Arlington cemetery to the whole continent by means of telephone amplifiers. The Staff of Life (Vitagraph)— The familiar but never too frequently told story of the metamorphosis of wheat which changes the grain to the loaf of bread on the table. Harrowing the ground in the spring precedes views of the tractor-drawn reaper and binder harvesting the grain. The harvesting is also shown as it is done by hand on smaller farms, where farm laborers pitch the bundles of grain onto wagons. A motor-driven "four binder" working on level land that stretches as far as the eye can reach, cuts and bundles the wheat, covering four widths at one round. The most remarkable sight of all is the combined harvester and thresher, pulled by twentyfour horses and threshing 1,600 sacks a daj'. Good close views of various parts of the machine show the different sorts of operations it performs. The reaper and binder are also seen in nearer view. Threshing as it is done now is interestingly contrasted with an old-fashioned horse-power ■ thresher. The modern machine, run by steam, ,| Mention The Educational Screen ^