[Panama Canal]

Description: Documenting the Panama Canal after it was opened to shipping rather than during excavation. Sampled frames show the completed Gaillard Cut as a navigable waterway, with a steam tugboat and a large ocean-going vessel moving through the narrow channel flanked by the cut's steep rocky walls — a dramatic aerial perspective capturing the full grandeur of the engineering achievement. Another frame shows workers and spectators pressed close together on a dock or lock wall watching something massive and steaming pass by. A final frame looks down the length of a lock structure, with parallel railroad tracks running along the top of the gates and the ornate stonework of a lock tower visible in the background — showing the canal's distinctive machinery. Together the footage documents the canal in early operation, the famous cut now filled with water and serving its intended purpose.


2 users have this film:
Periscope Film, Prelinger Archives


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