Adam to Atom
This film is John Ott’s 29-minute narrated version of Helen Tieken Geraghty’s one and a half hour musical stage production “Adam to Atom,” which chronicles famous moments of human engineering progress, predominantly within Western civilization.
This film begins with exterior footage of people ascending the Museum of Science and Industry’s front steps to attend the stage production of “Adam to Atom,” directed by Helen Tieken Geraghty. The film highlights significant moments in human engineering history, and does so by alternating selected scenes from Geraghty’s play with separate footage depicting various engineering achievements.
Scenes from “Adam to Atom” include reenactments of the building of the Egyptian pyramids, philosophical ponderings by Archimedes, Euclid and Pythagoras in Ancient Greece, Roman Emperor Claudius’ engineering of the aqueduct, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the movable-type printing press, James Watt’s development of the steam engine, the signing of the Constitution of the United States by the Founding Fathers, the founding of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph, and Henry Ford’s creation of the Model T.
The film concludes with a montage of clips that display mass production machinery in operation and idealize American-engineered products such as a Mississippi Valley Barge Line towboat, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a rocket launched into space.
“Adam to Atom” ran between July 12 and September 30, 1952 at the Museum of Science and Industry’s theater during the Centennial of Engineering, a one hundredth anniversary celebration of the founding of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The stage production starred Richard Harding Humphrey in a variety of roles, featured a cast of 70, included 340 costumes, and spanned 25 scenes. Free screenings of the film were made available for schools and clubs courtesy of the Ideal Pictures Corporation.