Editing Powers of Ten (film series)

{{Short description|Series of American documentary films}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2025}}
{{Infobox film
| name        = Powers of Ten
| image       = File:Powers-of-Ten-film-(1977)-title-card.png
| caption     = Title card for the 1977 version
| alt         = 
| director    = [[Charles and Ray Eames]]
| distributor = {{ubl|[[IBM]]|Pyramid Films}}
| released    = {{film date|1977|09|04}}
| runtime     = 9 min
| based_on    = ''[[Cosmic View]]'' by [[Kees Boeke]]
| music       = [[Elmer Bernstein]]
| narrator    = {{ubl|Judith Bronowski (1968)|[[Philip Morrison]] (1977)}}
| country     = United States
| language    = English
}}

The '''''Powers of Ten''''' are two short American documentary films written and directed by [[Charles and Ray Eames]]. Both works depict the relative [[Scale (spatial)|scale]] of the [[universe]] according to an [[order of magnitude]] (or [[logarithmic scale]]) based on a [[Decade (log scale)|factor of ten]], first expanding out from the Earth until the entire universe is surveyed, then reducing inward until a single atom and its quarks are observed.

==History and background==
The first film, '''''A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe''''',<ref name=Aiga>{{cite web |last=Repp |first=Philip |date=April 2001 |title=Loop: AIGA Journal of Interaction Design Education - Three Information Design Lessons |url=http://loop1.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentID=30 |access-date=7 August 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150405133558/http://loop1.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentID=30 |archive-date=5 April 2015}}</ref> was a prototype and was completed in 1968; the second film, '''''Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero''''',<ref>{{cite news |last=Overbye |first=Dennis |date=April 26, 2005 |title=Philip Morrison, 89, Builder of First Atom Bomb, Dies |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |edition=New York |issn=0362-4331 |oclc=1645522 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/science/26morrison.html |access-date= March 25, 2015 |quote=He helped write the script and narrated the 1977 film "Powers of Ten," also by Charles and Ray Eames, in which a camera zooms from a couple having a picnic in Chicago out to the limits of the cosmos and then back down through the woman's hand to the level of atoms and quarks. In 1992, he and his wife, Phyllis, with the Eameses, turned it into a book. ''Correction: April 28, 2005, Thursday: An obituary on Tuesday about Dr. Philip Morrison, a Manhattan Project scientist who helped assemble the first atomic bomb and later campaigned against it, misstated the release date of "Powers of Ten," a film narrated and partly written by Dr. Morrison that takes viewers to the outer edge of the cosmos. It was released in 1968. (It was rereleased in 1977.)''}}</ref> was completed in 1977.

The ''Powers of Ten'' films were adaptations of the book ''[[Cosmic View]]'' (1957) by [[Netherlands|Dutch]] educator [[Kees Boeke]].<ref>Boeke, Kees. ''Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps''. John Day Co., 1957.</ref> Both films, and a book based on the second film,<ref>Morrison, Philip, et al. ''Powers of Ten: About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe''. Scientific American Books, 1990.</ref> follow the form of the Boeke original, adding color and photography to the black and white drawings employed by Boeke in his seminal work.

The 1977 film has a number of changes from the prototype, including being entirely in color, moving the starting location from [[Miami]] to [[Chicago]], removing the relativistic (time) dimension, introducing an additional two powers of ten at each extreme, a change in narrator from Judith Bronowski to [[Philip Morrison]], and much-improved graphics.<ref name="Aiga"/>

== Synopsis ==

=== 1968 version ===
This version of the film has two clocks in the corner showing the comparison between the viewer's time and that of Earth time. As the viewer's speed increases, Earth time, relative to the viewer, also increases.
It was installed in the Smithsonian Institution's [[National Air and Space Museum]]'s Life in the Universe gallery at the time of the museum's opening in 1976, until the gallery's closure in 1978.

There is also a 1968 [[National Film Board of Canada]] film entitled ''[[Cosmic Zoom]]'' which covers the same subject using animation.  It is wordless, using sped-up music during the return trips to normal size.

=== 1977 version ===
The film begins with an overhead view of a man and woman picnicking in a park at the [[Chicago]] lakefront — a {{convert|1|m|ft|sp=us|adj=mid}} overhead image of the figures on a blanket surrounded by food and books they brought with them, one of them being ''The Voices of Time'' by [[J.T. Fraser|J. T. Fraser]]. The man (played by Swiss designer Paul Bruhwiler) then sleeps, while the woman (played by Eames staffer Etsu Garfias) starts to read one of the books. The viewpoint, accompanied by [[Dramatic structure#Exposition|expository]] [[voiceover]] by [[Philip Morrison]], then slowly zooms out to a view {{convert|10|m|ft|sp=us}} across (or {{nowrap|10<sup>1</sup> meters}} in [[scientific notation]]). The zoom-out continues (at a rate of one power of ten per 10 seconds), to a view of {{convert|100|m|ft|sp=us}}<!--10^2--> (where they are shown to be in [[Burnham Park (Chicago)|Burnham Park]],<ref name="Slate Hughes">{{cite news |last1=Hughes |first1=James |title=The Power of Powers of Ten |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/12/powers_of_ten_how_charles_and_ray_eames_experimental_film_changed_the_way.html |access-date=September 12, 2022 |work=Slate |date=December 4, 2012}}</ref> near [[Soldier Field]], then {{convert|1|km|ft|sp=us}}<!--10^3--> (where we see the entirety of Chicago), and so on, increasing the perspective and continuing to zoom out to a field of view of {{nowrap|10<sup>24</sup> meters}}, or a field of view 100 million [[light year]]s across. The camera then zooms back in at a rate of a power of ten per 2 seconds to the picnic, and then slows back down to its original rate into the man's hand, to views of negative powers of ten: 10 [[centimeter]]s ({{nowrap|10<sup>−1</sup> meters}}), and so forth, revealing a [[white blood cell]] and zooming in on it—until the camera comes to [[quark]]s in a [[proton]] of a [[carbon]] [[atom]] at {{nowrap|10<sup>−16</sup> meters}}.<ref name="Aiga"/>

== Reception and legacy ==
Physicist [[Robbert Dijkgraaf]] noted: "It is a brilliant short documentary [...]. If I wanted to show an alien how we view the world, I would show this movie".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Calmthout |first=Martijn van |date=2017-05-06 |title='Je moet afleren om aan onbelangrijke dingen te werken' |url=https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/je-moet-afleren-om-aan-onbelangrijke-dingen-te-werken~b33c0cff/ |access-date=2023-04-15 |website=[[de Volkskrant]] |language=nl-NL}}</ref>

In 1998, ''Powers of Ten'', the 1977 version, was selected for preservation in the United States [[National Film Registry]] by the [[Library of Congress]] as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".<ref>[https://www.loc.gov/film/titles.html Films Selected to The National Film Registry, 1989-2010].</ref><ref>{{cite web |year=2010 |title=About Powers of Ten |website=powersof10.com |publisher=Eames Office |url=http://www.powersof10.com/film |access-date=25 March 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140723055310/http://www.powersof10.com/film |archive-date=23 July 2014}}</ref>

== Related books ==
*{{cite book |last1=Morrison |first1=Philip |author-link1=Philip Morrison |last2=Morrison |first2=Phylis Morrison |year=1994 |orig-year=1982 |title=Powers of Ten: A Book About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding another Zero |publisher=Scientific American Library |isbn=978-0-7167-6008-5}}

== Related films ==
* ''[[Cosmic Zoom]]'' (1968), the aforementioned eight-minute short from Canada.<ref>{{Cite video |people=Eva Szasz |date=1968 |title=[[Cosmic Zoom]] |medium=film |publisher=[[National Film Board of Canada]] |location=[[Ottawa River]]}}</ref>
* ''[[Cosmic Voyage (1996 film)|Cosmic Voyage]]'' (1996), the Oscar-nominated loose remake of ''Powers of Ten'' in [[IMAX]] format for the [[National Air and Space Museum]].<ref>{{cite video |people=Bayley Silleck and [[Morgan Freeman]] |date=1996 |title=[[Cosmic Voyage (1996 film)|Cosmic Voyage]] |medium=[[IMAX]] |publisher=[[National Air and Space Museum]], [[Smithsonian Institution]] |location=[[Venice]], Italy}}</ref>
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iAytbmXYXE ''Our Universe is SO big, it's mindblowing!'' (2021)]

==See also==
*''[[Cosmic Eye]]'' (2012), remake of ''Powers of Ten''
* [[Orders of magnitude (length)|Orders of magnitude]]
* [[Earth's location in the universe]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}


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{{Charles and Ray Eames}}
{{orders of magnitude wide}}
{{Earth's location}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Powers of Ten}}
[[Category:1968 films]]
[[Category:1977 films]]
[[Category:1968 short documentary films]]
[[Category:1977 short documentary films]]
[[Category:United States National Film Registry films]]
[[Category:Documentary films about science]]
[[Category:Documentary films about mathematics]]
[[Category:American short documentary films]]
[[Category:Orders of magnitude]]
[[Category:Films set in Chicago]]
[[Category:Holism]]
[[Category:Films directed by Charles and Ray Eames]]
[[Category:Films scored by Elmer Bernstein]]
[[Category:1970s English-language films]]
[[Category:1960s English-language films]]
[[Category:1960s American films]]
[[Category:1970s American films]]
[[Category:English-language short documentary films]]