Thunderbolt Hunters (1941)

[Music] [Music] [Music] deafening and terrifying is the voice of nature about the violent to the thunderstorm devastating the blinding both the splash between diverse smashing free backing off masking anything that offers resistant to their unbelief front this time spaghetti men exclaiming in fear for my latest attorneys enjoy after Benjamin Franklin's scientific but they did set the pattern for a new and strange profession of today dedicated to spying on the angry guys resting from nature of the truth mountain fundable lightning protection for our powers to give these studies finding the vision for almost every modern activity depended in some way on the steady uninterrupted flow of electricity so nowadays in any one of many intellect enough to be first LP problems with perils an approaching Thunder to direction north-northeast velocity is 35 ok thanks that we do [Music] but a firework move anemones big truck I do is he heading for New York City how about calling on that guy over there and that that guy was always looking for lightning now right after midnight today when I rip snortin storms coming up I had only to think of that bird he's a wonderful hunter but some distant airport or power company outpost comes a warning for which our modern Thunderbolt hunter has waited today sweet perhaps money welcome is the tall in the dead of night for night time is best to return successful operations of the trapped by which this scientific country there is gay vampire state point powering darkly above New York's nighttime field framed fires the pan happy service period lightning-rod tallest of the most effective for gathering Thunder booms in the Empire State Building here's a hundred goes into any one of his lightning zaps it set way up in the very peak of the tower this path is really a battery of rental machines which measure and record the time duration and varying current many lightning Pro quickly hit the doughnut hearing it hundred and four floors above extreme red this way through the maze of steel beams and break starts the machine tends them careful while they warm up now everything is in readiness to take the fingerprint of any visiting light but this is only half the job he's off to another ambush half a mile away of the world's busiest corner 39 floors up in the air is a battery of strain high-speed camera especially designed to photograph lightning bolts at play at the throw of a flipped motors begin to watch voltage is recycling adjustment and as the throw arm sweeps over New York for long and another portrait for the thunderbolt hunters picture gallery back in the laboratory these curious portraits are assembled pathetic how'd you like to see the fingerprints of a thunderbolt straight from the Empire State Building well there they are and beauty a series of sharp Peaks on a chart and there's a perfect play-by-play photograph of the same lightning stroke together these pictures provide a complete record and if they don't make sense to you and me it's only because we're not experienced Thunderbolt hunted let's go back to the camera room and interpret these pictures in terms everybody can understand our eyes saw only if this surprises revealed by the Thunderbolt hunters ultra-high speed cameras what appeared as a single flash was in reality a series of truth starting with a stepped leader a sort of lightnings show moving downward in a series of short rushes changing course with each brush when this advanced agent of lightning contacts the ground and establishes a conducting path of vision high power returns will climb up a leader from the earth contrary to what we've always thought the really destructive discharge goes from Earth to cloud and there may be several of them in the same group each subsequent returning which is also preceded by a faint downward leader but these leaders are continuous not stepped like the first sometimes in the case of tall pointed structures the stepped leader goes up from earth to cloud but the other leaders always move down the scientific research forces us to revise some of our test notions as to what happens when and how during a lightning in addition to their long-range spying on real while lightning over New York City the thunderbolt hunters have developed facilities at tip field Massachusetts for creating lightning in miniature controllable form for close-up study the man on the left is dr. Crower bhima quechua the chief Thunderbolt hunter both tall black metal bandit cylinders here in the high-voltage lab are the generators which hatch out the artificial Thunderbolt they're the laboratory storm clouds the hum of the generator signaled the approach to the laboratory storm that's 8 million volts just baby lightning but a tough baby to fool with in this laboratory may be studied in miniature many of the habits and effects of nature's mightiest Thunderbolts this model like the Empire State Building itself is constructed to facilitate rather than resist the electric discharge so the model survives the strokes of baby lightning just as its Big Brother survived the real thing by conducting the stroke harmlessly to ground here are exploded some of the favorite myths such as the old saw that lightning never strikes twice in the same place what's the flash return again and again to the Empire State [Music] because lightning follows the line of least resistance it returns again and again and the towering structure acts as lightning rod for the hole later because lightning takes the shutters windmills tall trees or other high objects have a tendency to divert it strokes from nearby buildings when such prominent conductors are lacking a good lightning rod system will take the discharge harmlessly to ground [Music] but should lightning strike and exposed an unprotected house the actual probability of which is amazingly low for nature's rather boast a stick of wood simulating a tree telephone pole or the Timbers of a house it shattered with explosive force by even this laboratory the stick is blown apart by the gas which is formed instantly as a heavy current vaporizes a pathway through the wood surprisingly varied other devastating pranks played by natural lightning but always it leaves it seven clues which show the way to its habits and behavior thus the Thunderbolt hunters through their unceasing research in field and laboratories are adding bit by bit to the accumulated knowledge by which they can cheat Vikings attack in seconds but and although the grim game is still far from one progress increasingly evident even when the most violent storms erased electric light gleam steadily steady buildings and suburban homes electric service no longer disrupted by the effect of light electric transportation continues to function without interruption giant power stations continue to send out the energy that turns the wheels of industrial America wheels that must not stop will that must keep turning ever faster and Fester's to make America safe and keep America free [Music]