On this day in 1958, Frank Capra’sfourth and final science documentary “The Unchained Goddess” was released. According to the infallible Wikipedia “The film was televised on February 12, 1958, with a disappointing audience share and many critical press reviews.”
This is the one where you may have seen a clip on the internet on YouTube, of people discussing the build-up of carbon dioxide and eventually people looking at Miami, in glass bottom boats.
There are some very good books about and articles about this series of documentaries. See, for example, “Sonnets & Sunspots: Dr. Research Baxter & and the Bell Science Films” by Eric Niderostt.
There’s also an interesting and useful discussion of Unchained Goddess in Alice Bell’s, Our Biggest experiment. Beyond that it’s also worth noting that “Meteora” as the capricious fickle goddess was considered a bit sexist, even at the time.
But it’s also an example of how much we knew how early and how little we did one for the time capsule, one for the piece of evidence for the prosecution against humans, when there is the intergalactic court of rights.
References
Gilbert, James Burkhart (1997). “9. Almost a message from God himself”. Redeeming culture: American religion in an age of science. University of Chicago Press. pp. 199–224. ISBN 9780226293219.