Industry on Parade. 301

[Music] What basic product is made in this white hot mastrom? How many million motorists dent their fenders every year? Who takes photographs by means of electricity? Why are carousel horses now splinterproof? Industry on Parade. A brand new look at our America. Produced on film each week by the National Association of Manufacturers. Rammers at work in Birmingham, Alabama, helping to make one of the most important products of this Pittsburgh of the South. What are they ramming? impregnated sand, forcing it down into great flasks to create molds in which once the pattern is removed, cast iron pipe will be formed. Cast iron pipe so indispensable to the transmission of water and gas. Such pipe laid down in European cities more than four centuries ago, is still intact today. But even with a record like that, the makers of cast iron pipe have not been content to rest on their laurels. And one of their most remarkable advances has been the development of an amazing process called centrifugal casting here in progress at one of the member firms of the cast iron pipe research association. Molten metal flows into the mold from a long thin ladle that retracts as it pours. While the pouring is in progress, the mold rotates slowly, just fast enough to keep the metal pinned by centrifugal force to the interior wall of the mold. Then it picks up speed tremendously and continues at that rate until the metal has hardened. When after as much as half an hour the metal has solidified, a special device moves in to withdraw the pipe from the mold. Sand that clings to the pipe must be knocked away. The beauty of this casting method is that during the spinning, all slag, loose sand, and other foreign matter have risen to the inside surface of the pipe from which they can now be easily ground off. A second form of centrifugal casting without the use of sand is filmed by industry on parade at another Birmingham plant. Here the molten iron is poured into a water cooled steel mold without any sort of liner. The mold is tilted slightly so the metal will flow toward the lowered end. But as the machine picks up speed, the metal is distributed equally throughout. [Music] [Applause] With this type of centrifugal casting, because of water cooling, it takes much less time for the metal to solidify, although a kneeling will be necessary to equalize possible internal strain in the metal. But whether they use sand or not, our cast iron pipe makers have certainly wrought some sweeping changes in their field. And though the metal they work with is basically the same as that used in the pipes that have survived 400 years, they have good evidence today's cast iron pipes are even better. Who knows how many centuries these products of modern industrial technology will go on serving humanity. Certainly longer than we or our great great great grandchildren will ever know. We Americans possess a priceless ingredient which is at a premium in today's troubled world. That ingredient is faith. faith inherited from our forefathers who forged a nation out of a wilderness. Pioneers who crossed this nation and built great cities on plain and wasteland. America's unshakable faith in God and country enabled us to build, to grow, to prosper in a nation of free men and women. No one from within or from without will ever destroy this nation if we strengthen our faith in our spiritual, political, and economic way of life. Here's [Music] a familiar sad situation. One that recurs 7 and a half million times each year. This motorist is one of the wiser victims, though he's wasted no time in getting to one of the 100,000 body repair shops, equipped to make that dented area look just like new again. Today he takes a cab to work while his rumpled fender is being straightened out. Because the dent is so minor, it can be erased in only one day, but any more serious damages would take somewhat longer because of the dozen or more painstaking operations involved. First, upholstery is removed from behind the damaged area, and the dent is carefully tapped out. Only a great many very gentle taps will restore the original contours. To make the surface perfectly smooth and to prepare it for finishing, the area now is sanded. A fine sanding by before painting begins. Surrounding parts of the car are protected with newspapers put on with masking tape. [Music] after the primary coat is applied, the fender gets a wet sanding which is repeated after all but the final coat. Enamels used are exactly the same as those used in the factory. And it's really something the way the paint industry can match perfectly, batches of paint turned out months or even years apart. Though many body repair shops are one-man industries, they still must have a lot of costly equipment if they're to turn out a professional job. For example, the infrared dryer, which directs the heat of dozens of lamps onto the painted area. A final polish and you'd never know the fender had ever been bumped. Certainly wouldn't guess how much pounding, grinding, and other working over it has received in the process of being restored to its original condition. One more motorist regains full pride in the faithful family automobile. To the Battel Institute, an industrial research organization in Columbus, Ohio, comes a man with an idea. Chester Carlson, a New York patent attorney, has worked up over a period of 6 years, a revolutionary new method of photocopying documents, a completely dry photographic process. What he wants to know is, can they help him make it practical and economical? [Music] First, the Battel experts had to satisfy themselves that the idea was technologically feasible before starting it through what you might call their idea clinic. Here we see the stage of progress achieved by 1944. Still a very crude system though based on wellfounded principles. An image is reflected onto an electrically charged plate, transferring the image to the plate electrostatically so that the picture, drawing, or whatever can then be duplicated on paper. A black powder with an electrical charge opposite to that of the plate is sprinkled over the specially coated metal. A piece of paper is pressed down on top of it. And as we'll see in a moment, the powder adheres to the paper in the pattern of the original. to fix the image on the paper. He now rests it briefly on a hot plate. So that was the basic concept. The need was for a machine that would achieve perfect results every time and for a company that would manufacture the machine and put it on the market. Both were found in the Haloid Company of Rochester, New York, a relatively small organization that risked its shareholders investments to bring out this device now happily in use all over the nation. A charged plate is placed in the camera and the image is projected onto it. Where light hits the plate, the charge is grounded off. Where light doesn't hit, in other words, where dark areas occur, the charge remains and thus is created a picture in electricity. The only problem now is to convert this picture into a black and white image on paper. And that's really no problem at all. The plate is removed from the camera and enclosed in a container holding black powder carrying a negative electrical charge. As the container is rocked, the powder flows back and forth over the plate. The powder is attached to a minute granular material and as it cascades over the plate, particles attracted to the positively charged areas on the plate are discharged until a dense layer has built up. Transferring the powder to paper is also accomplished by electricity. A positive charge in the paper attracts the particles away from the plate. After heat treatment to fix the image, the paper master will be ready in a matter of minutes to start producing hundreds or even thousands of perfect duplicate copies. Zerography, another great boon to the business of disseminating information resulting from prolonged and expensive industrial research. Most of us can't afford to buy tools and machines like these. Yet, all of them are essential to the job being performed. It takes an average investment of $12,000 to create a job in industry. This is the money for plants, buildings, tools, and equipment, and other assets behind each job. Today there are about 8 and a2 million Americans, people in all walks of life who own shares in corporations. These people are responsible for the money which helped start a business or enabled it to expand and grow. [Applause] Hey kids, how'd you like to live near this factory? Every few days they put together a merrygoround right out in front. Only trouble is you can't ride it. And almost as soon as it's assembled, it'll be taken apart again and shipped off to some remote part of the country. We're at the Arrow Development Company in Mountain View, California. Manufacturers of carousels, miniature trains, airplane rides, and other wonderful devices for carnivals and amusement parks. Horses for a scaledown merry-goround like those for the larger models are no longer carved out of wood. There were too many splinters and brokenoff legs and heads. So now the galloping steeds are cast in aluminum and welded together. In appearance, though the horses are unchanged, they're still as gaudy as ever. The colors are bright and bold. Flash is put in the eye like this. No two horses on a carousel are quite alike. Another aspect of merrygoround so wrapped in tradition that no one would dare to change it is the music. What would a ride be worth if not accompanied by the wheezing strains of the collab? And for that matter, what would life be worth if there were no merrygorounds? [Music]