THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW

[Music] Ours [Music] is a world of technological breakthrough where every new innovation thrusts us higher onto the wave of the future. A future where frontiers are no longer measured by finite boundaries, but by the boundaries of man's restless mind. In threading the maze of this new world, man sometimes achieves a major discovery by taking a fresh look at familiar materials. Wood has always been one of man's most useful allies. [Music] Its beauty has thrilled him since he abandoned his cave for a house. But wood means more than beauty. It is the very grain of man's existence. He consumes the fruit of the tree, its seeds, and its sap. He uses wood in every phase of daily life. [Music] Through traditional craftsmanship and advanced technology, man now engineers wood to add still another dimension to his environment. Today, through applied research, paneling of new style, easy care, and long-lasting beauty has been brought within the reach of every economic level. [Music] from the wood chip reduced to its component fibers has evolved a great new industry based on engineered wood. Through intensive research and development, man has taken wood apart, engineered it, and put it together again in a new and wonderful form. Hardboard. A creation as flexible as man's imagination. Useful in a thousand ways. Evidence of its many forms can be seen everywhere. In pegboard, fine furniture, decorator panels, all widely used in homes, business, and industry. Inside or out, it does the job better, longer. Designed to defy the elements as exterior siding, it will not split, check, or crack in any kind of weather. And with its wide range of wood grains, textures, and imaginatively patterned surfaces, hardboard paneling has an appeal that is truly universal. Dramatic in a different way is the lacy elegance of filigree, an artful device to create new illusions of dimension and depth. Our goal, usefulness and beauty in a wood product that is an improvement on wood. [Music] When your product is better than wood to start with, improving it isn't easy. We keep trying. Innovators can't take for granted the concept of durability or any concept. So, in our testing laboratories, we create rainstorms that last for years. and use miniature suns to make sure our finishes outweather the weather. It's this leading edge of research that keeps our industry young and forward-looking. In our pursuit of proven durability, the lab becomes the battleground. [Music] Sometimes it's timehonored skills that deliver the newest and best. An engraver may spend painstaking months creating a plate pattern for a newly designed deep textured panel. Yet even skill doesn't guarantee success. On occasion, even the best is not good enough because here we are dealing with perfection. No, no, no, no. This area to the left here, this is too deep. You have undercuts. Uh we'll we'll get hang-ups in the press if you if you do that. This area over here is illdefined. It should be in our design concept. Argument and debate are among our principal tools. In creating graure patterns, designers select the best elements from a score of wood grains and combine them into what they consider to be one perfect new pattern. Thus, we improve on nature. even human nature. The result is often a vibrant new grain. To stay in the forefront, you have to be a trends setter. That's why we study fashions, work with color experts, and come up with paneling that says leadership in many ways. But the base material behind the delicate colors and handsome styling is sturdy hardboard. behind it. The fiber and the chip. [Music] Chips from the biggest wood pile in the world. Wood flakes, too. Raw material supplied by small independent loggers or chips by the carload. Never enough. So, we also make our own. Our appetite is insatiable. [Music] Chips are rushed into the mill, screened, sized, and fed into huge steam guns, converted into their basic fibers, and are on their way to becoming hardboard. [Music] Natural wood transmuted by advanced scientific knowhow into a vast variety of man-made products. Nearly 700 different products, including a variety of moldings and trims. moving out to customers at a rate of millions of square feet every day. Where does it all come from? [Applause] A vast amount comes from our own forest lands. Using the most modern methods of harvesting timber, we are achieving maximum use of hundreds of thousands of acres from coast to coast. Is this destruction? No, precisely the opposite. Modern forestry depends on high yield methods. Clear the land and replant it scientifically, thus growing more trees in the same area than nature ever could. Uh would you see if you could get 81 and have him meet me in section 35 of 311 at the select tree to shoot some signs. [Applause] The extent of our woodland is such that we profit by selling part of our crop to nearby paper and lumber mills. And we're developing yet another yield, oil drawn from deposits beneath the flourishing roots. And to increase this bounty three-fold, our tallest, best trees we never harvest. They are the foundation on which we build our future. These markings indicate a select tree. taller, straighter, healthier than its neighbors. Such trees are reserved for a special purpose. [Applause] The branches are shot off by expert marksmen to save the tree from damage. Science are those new growths which possess the characteristics of the superior tree. They are carefully cut and collected for grafting to hearty rootstock already growing in a special seed orchard. Scientific care and cross-pollinization ensure their growth into superior trees. Because grafts are made from a mature tree, they will produce seedbearing cones in only three or four years. And you might say we're expecting expecting so many superior seeds to deliver us so many superior trees, it will keep our computer busy just working out the genetics. The conversion of wood to fiber to hardboard requires water to wash out wood sugars, hundreds of thousands of gallons daily. Unrefined wood sugars once posed a serious pollution problem. Mindful of the threat that industrial pollution imposes on our ecology, we have steadily progressed toward purification of all waters we use. With a multi-million dollar investment, we're on the threshold of a program that will purify our wastes far beyond state and federal Through research and experiment in our laboratories, these wastewood sugars, once so deadly to marine life, are today refined to become a marine life food. Mason X has added still another dimension to our progress. Its energy boosting nutrients find a ready market among marine farmers. And as a carbohydrate source, it serves the needs of the dairy farmer and the cattle rancher as well. And in our laboratories, scientists are working toward that tomorrow when our exploding population in seeking new sources of food will welcome refined wood sugars as staples in our diet. Hardboard as an industry was born of the waste products of sawmills. Mason X was born of the waste products of hardboard. Only our researchers can forecast the future. That's why they work at the whatif game. Certain that our future will become increasingly concerned with salvaging waste products. [Music] Whenever we play the whatif game, we find it's just the beginning. We stand on the threshold of tomorrow, diligently searching with eyes that see into the future. Looking always toward newer and better products that will improve on nature. Looking to combine wood with plastics, with metal, with materials we haven't thought of yet. cross-pollinating new ideas for developments that will mature as improved methods. That's how we will continue to build, continue to contribute toward a brighter tomorrow. [Music] [Applause] [Music]