ELECTRICITY’S STORY

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 198, 19 May 1936, Page 10

ELECTRICITY’S STORY

Film Depicts Progress Through the Ages The Mayor, Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, members of the Wellington City Council and heads of departments attended _-i private screening at Electricity House last night of a talking film depicting the progress of electricity through the ages. Two other lighter films demonstrated humorously, but with undeniable emphasis, the advantages and comforts of modern electrical equipment, besides giving an illuminating forecast of what the future holds in this field of science. The films will be shown free to the public on Wednesday and succeeding afternoons.

The first picture, “'The Story of Electricity Through the Ages,” was introduced on the screen by the Hon. It. ■Semple. Minister of Public Works, who referred to New Zealand’s great potentialities in the field of hydro-electric development. The picture showed the primitive apparatus and appliances used by early scientists, such as Watson, who, in the reign of Queen Anne, “gave himself a little shock and a big idea.” The revolutionary discoveries of Humphrey Davey and Michael Faraday arc graphically depicted, and the audience realises that but for their genius wireless, the aeroplane and the jnotor-car might never have been evolved. The picture shows in an absorbing way how electricity, discovered but not comprehended in early times, has been harnessed and developed until at the touch of a button it has become ‘‘the wizard in the wall.” Tlie second film, entitled, “Well, 1 Never,” is frankly a burlesque, and shows how the comfort which users of electricity enjoy can bring peace and harmony to a household where previously the food had not been cooked, but cremated. “Plenty of Time to Play” is the title of the third offering, and though it deals with the possibilities of electrical development in 1955 >it tellingly points ‘he moral that by availing themselves of modern electrical labour-saving devices, people can abolish much of the household drudgery of former years.