Reel and Slide (Jan-Sep 1919)

128746 APR -2 1919 M A G A ZL I N E VOL. II APRIL, 1919 NO. 4 Philadelphia Museum Teaches Thousands With Films Students and Public Alike Receive Visual Instruction on Varied Topics Institution Produces Own Pictures and Loans Them to Schools Outside City T By Charles R. Toothaker (Curator, Philadelphia Commercial Museum) HE Philadelphia Commercial Museum is a public institution which helps American business men to sell their goods in foreign countries and also aids them to find raw materials which they need. This institution has exhibits which cover 150,000 feet of floor space, illustrating the people and products of foreign countries and the industries of the world. It carries on a varied educational work under the immediate direction of the curator. Students of the Philadelphia schools (public and private alike) visit the Commercial Museum daily to hear free illustrated lectures and study the exhibits. All of the lectures are of an industrial, commercial and geographic nature. The classes come on dates selected by the teachers. If a class is studying Argentina, the teacher asks for an illustrated lecture which will cover the great industries of that country — wheat and flour, cattle, meat, hides, sheep and wool, flax seed, etc., harbor facilities, the railroads, and other things connected with the commercial prosperity of the country. If the class is studying coal the lecture covers the formation, mining, marketing and uses of coal, including the manufacture of coal tar products. Teachers say that the expert knowledge of the scientific staff of the Commercial Museum is invaluable to them, for the lectures are given by men who know how to talk to either young children or grown people and the story is always adapted to the intelligence of the class. The teachers say also that these lectures make a lasting impression, not only because they are good lectures, illustrated by the right motion pictures, and by colored lantern slides of high quality, but because at the conclusion of every lecture the pupils are taken directly to the exhibits which illustrate the same subject and they see the actual objects that have been discussed — wheat, flour, hides, wool, etc., from Argentina, or coal, coke and coal tar products with a wonderful model of a coal mine in miniature. It is an ideal combination to be able to study both from pictures and real objects at the same time. The Commercial Museum offers more than seventy different lectures on such subjects as Industrial Philadelphia, China, South Africa, France, Cotton, Iron and Steel, Lumbering, Sugar, Commercial Transportation, etc. Visiting classes range from the fourth grades to high school and university students, and 40,000 come every year to these lectures. Lectures Loaned to Schools Lectures of similar nature arc loaned free to public schools in Pennsylvania. Each lecture consists of a carefully selected set of seventy colored slides accompanied by type-written sheets describing each slide in much the same words which would be used to a class in the lecture room in the museum. It is a lecture which can be read to a class, word for word, although teachers are advised to put it before their pupils in their own language. The great advantage of this plan is that it carries the important facts and reliable information to busy teachers who have many subjects to ■ cover — mathematics, English, history, a whole curriculum. They find, the "canned lecture" an efficient practical help. These loan lectures are made up in many duplicate sets and are used extensively in rural districts, where very often parents as well as children get. both information and enjoyment from them. Most rural schools do not own a stereopticon, so the museum loans to any school which needs it a screen and a lantern fitted with an incandescent or arc lamp, an acetylene burner or even a kerosene lamp where they can use nothing else. These lantern slide lectures reach audiences totaling 100,000 annually, mostly in the smaller cities or in country districts. Motion picture films are also loaned to any school which has proper facilities for showing them. Up to this time, however, there are few schools in Pennsylvania with projecting machines and booths properly fitted for showing ordinary film. Public lectures are given to large audiences of grown people every Saturday afternoon. These are all of a popular nature and mostly of the type usually termed travel talks, Collections of specimens of important commercial products are given free to the schools and these are accompanied by sets of photographs illustrating their production, manufacture and transportation. A very extensive collection of industrial photographs from all parts of the world is the necessary foundation on which much of this educational work is built up. A large proportion of these are original negatives, for it is necessary to reproduce many of the pictures in large numbers. Thousands of pictures have been taken by the museum staff. Good motion picture films have been obtained from every possible source until at the present time the museum owns a very remarkable collection of selected instructional touching on industrial and commercial geography. It was necessary to own these films for there was no possibility of getting the needed subjects by rental. Do Not Depend on Exchanges The local exchanges have never had anything but a very limited stock to choose from and the films most needed by the museum were often discarded from stock, for the good business reason that they were seldom rented out, since, of course, these subjects are not the kind which the theaters can use. So the museum began to accumulate good industrials by gift, loan, purchase and "permanent lease." Then these films were edited, which often meant discarding three-quarters of a film in order to get a clear and simple picture of first class educational value. Next came, of course, the taking of pictures, and the museum purchased a first class moving picture camera. With this films have been produced illustrating such industries as white pine A class of school children getting visual instruction at tin delphia Commercial Museum on the subject of Argentine industries Phila wm