The Heart of Cleveland (1924)

Genre

family, history, adventure

Country

United States

Runtime

29 min

Rating

10.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A silent film sponsored by the Cleveland Illuminating Company that explains how electricity is generated and distributed. It shows the company's new coal-burning boilers and steam turbine to demonstrate modern power technology.

educationalinformativehistoricalmatter-of-factinstructionalearnestslow-paceddated

What happens

The Heart of Cleveland is a twenty-nine-minute silent film released in 1924 sponsored by the Cleveland Illuminating Company (CEI) and produced by Rothacker Film Manufacturing Company. A 1925 article about the film in the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the mystery around generating and distributing electricity had been "made as clear as chopping wood by a motion picture, just produced which has been exhibited in various parts of Cleveland." In addition to the social impacts related to electric power and its impact on new technologies for the home, the film tells an important story related to industrial history. When the film was made, CEI had just installed its first pulverized coal-burning boilers at Lake Shore—the first in Ohio and much more efficient than older boilers. In 1925, the company installed the largest steam turbine in the world at the time. Lake Shore's output jumped to 284,000 kilowatts. Pulverized coal became the standard method for coal-burning power plants in the 20th century. The CEI Lake Shore power station operations demonstrate the mass-scale technology necessary to increase electricity availability in the U.S. In 2021, the National Film Preservation Foundation awarded the Hagley Museum and Library a grant to preserve a copy of the film. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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