The Joukowski Airfoils (1964) [video]

Clearly, the focus was on the graphics. And, oh, how lovely these animations are, how clearly they convey the message.

There was a time when educational films were based on two expectations that seem foreign and perhaps quaint in today's click-driven world. First, that the viewer already has some background knowledge, usually gained by staring at textbooks late at night, doing assignments without a safety net provided by, well, the 'net. And, second, that the viewer fully expects that the film will provide clarity on some issues that might be hard to grasp well by making marks on paper.

This reminds me of the days when educational films focussed on educating, not amusing. What a breath of fresh air this is. Fresh air from a dusty past.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromberg-Carlson

>In the early 1960s, Stromberg-Carlson also produced the SC4020, a computer-controlled film recorder used chiefly for Computer Output Microfilm applications. The SC4020 could output graphics and text either to 16mm microfilm or hardcopy (using chemically-developed light-sensitive paper) utilizing a Charactron CRT as the heart of the recorder (with the microfilm camera pointed directly at the face of the Charactron inside a light-proof column inside the 4020). Some 4020s were fitted with a 16mm motion picture camera instead of the stock microfilm camera, in order to create some of the first computer-generated animation.

>Though intended as a high-speed printer, the SC4020 could be used to create vector-graphical output of scientific and engineering data, rather than plotting numbers by hand. Early installations of the SC4020, with its plotter capability, were at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, CA and at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated in Murray Hill, NJ.[5] The SC4020 could also be used to create computer-animated movies on a frame-by-frame basis. These computer-animated movies, usually using vector graphics, were of scientific and engineering data and also of artistic investigations, done with the 35 mm camera or the 16 mm camera. Pin-registered cameras were used for creating movies on the SC4020 to minimize jitter. Computer-animated movies using raster graphics were created on the SC4020 at Bell Labs in the early 1960s using FORTRAN and the BEFLIX subroutine language.

https://tcmedia.akamaized.net/techchannel/11131/iPhone/AA120...