November 12, 2009
It’s a 1972 ‘truck survey,’ but why? Help identify this week’s Lost and Found Film
Editor’s Note: The UW Audio Visual Services Materials Library has more than 1,200 reels of film from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, documenting life at the University through telecourses, commercial films and original productions. Some of the short films are easily identifiable, but many more remain mysteries. Who shot these films and why? Can you help answer those questions? Faculty and staff can use the comments field at the end of the story to send ideas. Those outside the University can e-mail filmarc@u.washington.edu.
This week’s film is about noise, but it’s silent. Made in 1972, it depicts research into noise made by trucks on a busy highway.
The film opens with a microphone mounted on a tripod and sitting on the side of a highway. A man — wearing a raincoat, naturally — speaks into a walkie-talkie. We see a truck filled with recording equipment, including a reel-to-reel recorder, a television monitor and an audiometer.
Next is a sign, “Truck survey ahead,” on the side of the highway. The trucks are lined up, waiting. Men with clipboards speak to truckers and complete the survey. The trucks drive away.
Then we see a room full of equipment — a reel to reel deck, monitor, two men recording information. Then there are computer key cards, a computer in operation, a bank of computers, a drum graph charting results. And finally there’s a man in an office, looking at a computer printout.
UW Film Archives Specialist Hannah Palin would like to know which UW department is conducting this research and how the research was used. She’d also like to know where those computers and equipment were located and where the highway research took place. And, as always, she’d like to know why this film was taken and how it was used.
Palin didn’t get any clues on last week’s film, Arson. If you can help her with either that one or Noise Pollution, be sure to log in and make a comment.
