Watch Testing Large Turbines, Westinghouse Co. Works For Free

Why so much hype?

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Testing Large Turbines, Westinghouse Co. Works (1904)During the early 1900's Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company made a number of industrial films that allowed the public to see what went on inside their buildings. Needless to say, these films didn't contain any sort of plot but some might find them interesting.As with the other films in the series, this one here has the camera sitting pretty far away from the action. The action, in this case, is pretty much what the title tells you. There's certainly not too much going on in this series of films but they at least give you a chance to see what was going on inside the factory and how things were ran back in the day. At just over two minutes this one here isn't as much of a chore to sit through but at the same time there's a reason these here aren't too popular among silent film buffs.

This short film is another in the generally dull series of films made by Biograph at the Westinghouse Works. The subject matter and the title mean that you could see all the important moments on a couple of snapshots, but the film drones on for nearly four minutes.We see a couple of turbines standing side by side. A number of men bustle around them, twiddling this and tweaking that, before the casing of one of them (turbines, not men) is removed by an out-of-shot overhead crane and lifted away. It's the kind of work that would be done by computer in a room void of human life today, but the volume of labour involved is probably the most thought-provoking aspect of this film.