Mobilizing Moving Images: Reusing a German Flow Film of the 1920s for U.S. Science Education in the Cold War

Abstract

This essay focuses on the reuse of film footage from a 1920s German hydrodynamics laboratory in U.S. science education films of the 1960s. By pointing out how these U.S. science education films were seen as a means of recruitment in the Cold War, it makes a case for the power of film as a medium of knowledge circulation with the ability to bridge geographical, chronological, and political gaps. The old footage of flow experiments served as a convenient tool to mobilize people for aerodynamic research. This reuse thus shows that research films were not only used to render visible something that is usually not visible to the human eye, but also for engaging people to serve the government. This essay argues that searching for such reuses of research films can enrich our understanding of the way laboratory traces actually make their way into education, society, and politics.