If you are in the mood to travel back in time more than a half century and watch government-made black-and-white films designed to make the public feel better about nuclear technology, the Department of Energy can fill that need online.
DOE’s Office of Legacy Management recently announced it is offering films from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) available online. Until recently the AEC’s 232 films were preserved mostly in vintage 16-millimeter format and few were converted to digital form.
To mark the AEC’s 80th birthday, the feds are using modern technology to gradually make the films available online. “The first phase includes descriptions and links to 22 films that can be downloaded from the NARA [National Archives and Record Administration] website,” Legacy Management said.
AEC was created in 1946 to manage atomic or nuclear technology for both civilian and military uses. The Atomic Energy Commission also spawned what are today the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and DOE.
AEC “used documentary filmmaking as one of its primary public outreach tools,” DOE’s Office of Legacy Management said in the recent announcement. “Between the late 1940s and the agency’s dissolution in 1974, it sponsored hundreds of films that documented nuclear research, promoted peaceful uses of atomic energy, trained scientists and engineers, and shaped public opinion about the Atomic Age.”