Westinghouse Works, 1904 (1904)
A series of short factory actualities filmed over several weeks in 1904 at Westinghouse's Pittsburgh manufacturing plants, showing workers assembling generators, winding coils, operating a steam hammer, and moving through the vast machine shops and foundries.
Shot by cinematographer G. W. “Billy” Bitzer for exhibition to Westinghouse employees and audiences at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, these films pioneered the use of mercury-vapor lighting and early crane shots to bring the scale of American industry to the screen. Twenty-one of the surviving films were named to the National Film Registry in 1998.
Background
This series of short factory actualities was filmed over several weeks in 1904 at the Westinghouse manufacturing plants in Pittsburgh by cinematographer G. W. “Billy” Bitzer, who later became famous for his long collaboration with director D. W. Griffith. The films were made for exhibition both to Westinghouse’s own employees and to the general public at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, a major event that drew large crowds eager to see new technology and industrial progress on display.
What to watch for
Watch for the footage of workers assembling generators, winding coils, and operating a massive steam hammer, scenes that pioneered the use of mercury-vapor lighting to properly illuminate the cavernous interior of the factory for filming, along with some of the earliest known crane shots to convey the sheer scale of the machine shops and foundries. Twenty-one of the surviving films from this series were named to the National Film Registry in 1998, recognizing their importance as an early record of American industrial life.
