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More Power to You

9 min 8 sec63 shots

Black-and-white scenes of an ocean liner, train, automobile, and industrial machinery introduce petroleum as a source of power for transportation and industry. Oil-field footage shows workers adding drill pipe, reaching oil-bearing rock, installing casing and a screen, cleaning a new well, and pumping wells that do not flow under their own pressure. The film explains that crude oil is separated from natural gas and water, moved by pipeline to storage tanks, and shipped in tankers to refineries.

At the refinery, each crude shipment is tested, heated, and separated in fractionating towers into materials with different boiling points, including gasoline, fuel oils, and raw materials for lubricants. Diagrams and animated molecules explain cracking, in which gas oil is heated under pressure, broken into smaller molecules, and separated in a bubble tower to produce gasoline. Laboratory workers test fuel and control temperatures, after which tank cars, barges, and pipelines distribute gasoline; the closing message links oil-derived horsepower to modern life with the phrase “More power to you.”

Provenance and rights

Original producer: Handy (Jam) Organization
Collection: Prelinger Archives
Original title: More Power to You
Date: Unknown
Original link: Open on Internet Archive
Rights: public_domain