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Aug. 20, 2009
Why a cat in a glass box? Help the library 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.

The images go by so quickly on this week's film, Public Opinion Laboratory, that it's hard to know just what's going on. Within the film's nearly three-minute running time, we see glass blowing, a home economics demonstration of how to cook pork roast and applesauce being canned, among other things. Why is that cat sitting in a glass box with a metal framed door? What is being measured when a woman bites down on a device? What is that man adjusting as he turns a large wheel surrounded by gauges?

The film was made in about 1948. It was originally silent, but a musical soundtrack was later added for a Special Collections presentation.

"There is a Public Opinion Laboratory manuscript collection in Special Collections," said Hannah Palin, film archives specialist with UW Special Collections. "We're looking for additional information about the Public Opinion Laboratory -- its history, personnel and location."

She'd also like to know what is going on in each of the film's sections, what experiments are being conducted and how the film was used.

Palin got a wealth of information from people who looked at last week's film, Big Beef Creek, much of it collected by Lin Murdock, student services coordinator in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. The fish in the film were being spray painted with a fluorescent dye and released back into the water. The man peering into a wooden box was looking at fish under fluorescent light to see if they are marked or unmarked. Go back to the story to read all the comments.

And now have a look at the whirlwind of images in Public Opinion Laboratory to see whether you have an opinion about it.




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portzer@ ()


Prognosticators share vision of Seattle's future in 1952.

In 1952, as part of Seattle’s year-long Centennial celebration, experts from the Washington Public Opinion Laboratory at the University of Washington prepare a report which compiles predictions of what Seattle might become in one hundred years hence. The report, which is placed in a time capsule at the Alki Monument, looks forward with pie-eyed optimism to the days of rocket planes, moving sidewalks, and the important part the city would play in world affairs.

The project was requested by Greater Seattle, Inc., a local booster group. Business executives, housewives, educators, civic officials, and people from all walks of life were polled, although many who were asked preferred to remain anonymous, feeling that their prognostications were too fantastic to be considered “official.”

The laboratory staff, which consisted of Dr. Stuart C. Dodd, Edith Dyer Rainboth, Theodore Q. Opdenwyer, Arch Cooper, Lida C. Swan, and Geraldine A. Cox, based their conclusions on the “informed guessing” of survey takers who may have been in a position to prophesize what the future may bring.

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I found this on HISTORY LINK through a quick yahoo search.  If you can find the people mention, you will probably find an explanation

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=pf_output.cfm&file_id=3457


     Thursday, August 20, 2009 8:31 AM

filmarc@ (Hannah Palin)
Special Collections

 I recently received an email from Dr. Nancy Robinson, Professor Emerita of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, who thinks that the cat in the box might be "part of an experiment by Edwin Guthrie (after whom Guthrie Hall is named), possibly in collaboration with Paul Horton.  Guthrie studied cats and their repetitive ("superstitious") behavior."

Another clue!


     Friday, August 28, 2009 9:14 AM

filmarc@ (Hannah Palin)
Special Collections

It was recently brought to my attention that this film is actually a compilation of scenes from various UW departments/projects, not just from the Public Opinion Laboratory. If anyone has any other information about the Chemistry Lab, the professors blowing glass, the Home Economics class, I would be thrilled to hear about it!
Thanks all!
Hannah

     Thursday, October 01, 2009 10:11 AM

frostj@ (Joe Frost)
UWMC ITS

It looks like a tour of labs on campus.  Public Opinion, then a stop in Bagley for Chemistry lab and for making custom glassware, in Roberts Hall to crush a pillar of wood, somewhere for cat testing, a boat and a dam (Mud Mountain?) for fisheries, Raitt Hall for Home Ec, and somewhere for what looks like coordination testing (using a wheel and rudder like an airplane with a bite mechanism and recording something about keeping the light centered).
     Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:23 PM