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This is a Billingham Film Unit production for ICI General Chemicals Division, filmed at the Billingham Cassel Works, with titles and commentary by Frank Phillips. The film documents the process for extracting sodium from sodium hydroxide, a process originally devised by Hamilton Young Castner (1858-98), as mentioned in the commentary.
A short ICI Billingham Film Unit documentary that discusses how recent improvements to ICI plant machinery and chemical processes have helped to dramatically decrease pollution.
An artist is commissioned to paint a mural about PVC and pays a visit to ICI to see what it is. This sponsored documentary covers the discovery in 1838 of polyvinyl chloride, the history of PVC, its invention, creation of polymers in chemistry labs, and some of its applications many years later, all hung on the narrative of an artist’s investigation to inform his work.
A documentary and educational film produced by the ICI Film Unit on the role of the engineer in the development of industrial production, building on the research of the chemist and physicist and making experiments practical on an industrial scale. The film records a student's progress through university, including a whiz through non-academic activities to illustrate the benefits of university, a summer apprenticeship schemes at ICI Wilton works, and internship programme in Canada. The final continues showing the student at work with a post-graduate student, conducting an experiment with an early analogue computer, taking his final exams and eventual graduation. The film ends with him now a junior engineer supervising other students.
ICI film promoting a work study scheme to help improve ICI efficiency during hard economic times. Includes excellent non-industrial sequences that illustrate some of the products manufactured with ICI materials, such as nylon (a woman with stockings), domestic scenes including valves for the TV, Formica tables, plastic ashtray, hoovering a carpet, scenes in Stockton market, haymaking, and men on ships during stormy weather, to illustrate "pulling together." A commentary accompanies the film.
Billingham Film Unit cine magazine that presents an overview of Imperial Chemical Industries' (ICI) history and development in Billingham and along Teesside.
Billingham Film Unit cine magazine that records a summer sports meeting at the Synthonia Club; and secondly, a short-form documentary describing the importance of nitrogen to ICI's operations.
ICI Billingham Film Unit cine-magazine of three industrial news items. Firstly, a record of the training of analytical laboratory assistants in the ICI Education Department. The second item follows the construction and operations for an ammonia filling station in Singapore. The third feature documents the Billingham process of capturing nitrogen.
Billingham Film Unit cine-magazine with two short bulletins documenting ICI staff at leisure and an industrial chemical science process: Sporting June records the Billingham Synthonia Club sports and gala day in June 1948, and Making Sulphuric Acid follows the industrial process stage by stage, with animated graphics and commentary to camera.
Billingham Film Unit cine magazine feature on the Research Department’s considerable importance on the ICI Billingham site, set out as if responding to workers’ complaints: “I’d like to know just what goes on there – if you ask me it’s a waste of space and building materials”. Chemists put an electron microscope and an X-ray diffraction camera to use to advance ICI production methods.
ICI Billingham Fim Unit cine magazine bulletins produced to entertain and inform. Firstly, "Making the Miner Safer Still" dicusses new safety improvements underground in the anhydrite mines; secondly, a short film about the presentation of awards for long service with ICI Billingham.
A promotional film by Turners Film Unit for the North East Development Council, which records the North East’s recent industrial, commercial, social and cultural successes to encourage businesses and families to move to the region. Includes footage of education, art and entertainment, shopping, and industry from Northumberland down to Tees Valley.
A promotional film produced by The Charter Film Group to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the granting of a Charter to Hartlepool by King John in 1201. The film documents services provided by Hartlepool Council such as housing, emergency services, transport, and leisure facilities. Footage includes material on the local industries shipbuilding, fishing and magnesium production in the Hartlepool area.
Promotional film for The North East Industrial and Development Association that looks at North East England. Deals mainly with industry but also looks at the landscapes of rural areas and the coast..
An overview of the North East Electricity Board's (NEEB) area of operation covering all regions in the North East, with music and commentary. Includes footage of NEEB electricity showrooms at Carliol House in Newcastle and retail activities, NEEB displays at the Yorkshire Show in Harrogate and the Durham County Show, workers leaving Rowntrees factory in York. Industries documented include open cast mining at Ashington and Monkwearmouth Colliery, Swan Hunters ship yard, manufacture of television cathode ray tubes in Sunderland, Patons and Baldwins wool factory in Darlington, and sequences on NEEB working practices.
A Turner Film Unit sponsored film for Robert Bowran demonstrating the manufacture and packaging of Bowran Paints in Pelaw, Gateshead, and its uses. These include the painting of ships at Teesport (now PD Ports), the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle and the Tees Newport Bridge in Middlesbrough, Dunston Power Station in Gateshead, the exterior of the Stork Margarine Works in Bromborough on the Wirral, and the Loch Sloy Hydro-Electric Scheme situated on the west bank of Loch Lomond, Scotland. This promotional film also features good footage of the steel-making process (possibly at the Shotton Steel Works in North Wales and also at Scunthorpe at John Lysaght's Normanby steelworks, part of Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds.). [Note that footage of steel production and interior at Dunston Power Station have been speeded up in this Turners production.]
A short comedy by the Cleveland Cine club set in a laboratory in which a complex scientific experiment turns out to be the making a cup of tea. Believed to have been shot at ICI Billingham the film shows various liquids being moved from beaker to beaker, boiled, spun and distilled to eventually produce the tea which is eventually drunk by the man carrying out the experiment.
A record of the working life and industrial landscape of ICI's Billingham Wharf, and the official opening on October 15th 1935 of the Coal Hydrogenation Petrol Plant of ICI Billingham, by former National Labour Party Prime Minister, M.P. James Ramsay MacDonald.
Billingham Film Unit production for the ICI Heavy Organic Chemicals Division documenting trials for a Dracone (D4) barge (a long, nylon and synthetic rubber flexible floating tube), which is towed from the Tees at Middlesbrough to Holland and back. The Dracone was invented by Newcastle-born, renowned engineer and Head of Cambridge University Engineering Department, Professor William Rede Hawthorne in 1955. The Fiery Cross tug boat, owned by the Tees Towing Company in Middlesbrough, is used in the trial for ICI. Footage includes shots along the River Tees and a view of the Transporter Bridge at dawn. Music and commentary accompanies this short documentary feature.
An industrial film by Cygnet Films commissioned by Phillips Petroleum Company, which looks at the oil industry on Teesside, in particular the large Phillp's Petroleum refinery development on the north bank of the Tees in the 1970’s. The film shows in detail the location of the Ekofisk oil platform off the coast of Norway and the two pipelines which run from it, one to Emden in northern Germany and the other to Seal Sands and Greatham on Teesside. The film shows the construction of the refinery acknowledging the sensitive environment in which it is being built.