Go Back in Time with the Westinghouse Works Collection
Some of the earliest films weren’t made to entertain. It would take a few years for people to begin to see movies as an artistic medium. The Lumière brothers are known for their advancements in filmmaking technology, as well as the short films they made between 1895 and 1905. One of their most famous films is Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, a simple, 46-second film that captured employees leaving one of their factories. There is no narrative, no camera work, just a chronicle of an event that took place every day. While many film scholars point to Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory as the first film ever made, it was actually Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene that beat the Lumières by six years.
Around the time the Lumière brothers were wrapping up their filmmaking endeavors, the Westinghouse Works Collection was underway in Pittsburgh. Similar to the Lumières’ Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, the Westinghouse Works Collection was made to show what life was like in the various Westinghouse factories and companies. The 21-film collection was produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company between April 13 and May 16, 1904. These films were shot by G. W. (Billy) Bitzer and are considered actuality films, a style of movie popular at the turn of the 20th century that captured life as it happened. This style would fall out of fashion when films began to be projected onto a screen instead of shown on Nickelodeon machines.
The Westinghouse films were screened at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, and little is known about the reason for their production. The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which made these films, also made movies for the Department of the Interior to be screened at the exposition. Reports from the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company say that twenty-nine films were made as part of the Westinghouse Works Collection, but only twenty-one are available from the Library of Congress.
In what is perhaps one of the earliest examples of film criticism, a review of the Westinghouse Works Collection was published in the Pittsburgh Post on May 12, 1904, after a screening at Carnegie Hall. In the article, the author (whose name is not attached to the Library of Congress’ citation) describes the event as satisfying “the curiosity of the Westinghouse employees who were desirous of seeing the views to be sent to the Louisiana Purchase exposition.” Four Westinghouse plants were captured: East Pittsburg, Swissvale, Wilmerding, and Trafford City. The author also notes that these films are the first to be successfully shot indoors, thanks to the recent invention of the Cooper Hewitt vaporized mercury lamp. Not only do the movies act as an historic record of labor in the United States, but the writer from the Pittsburgh Post remarks on moments of humor to be found in the interstitials from the Mutoscope company. The last moment from the event the author noted was the “pleasing organ selections” from Walter R. Hall.
Selections from the Westinghouse Works Collection can be viewed on the Library of Congress website.
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