Decimal Operations (1977)

This interesting educational 16mm film from my archives has lots of cool slices of life in the mid-1970's interspersed with graphics of decimal operations. Cool calculators? Check. Rulers? Check. Kids outside having fun with measuring things? Check! As usual I transferred this film with my own Telecine and corrected color to taste. Enjoy!
#franlab #math #decimal
- Intro Music by Fran Blanche -

[jondhuse]

Love the way the number shuffle off to the left to a drum roll... cool!

[GPW]

0:59 I instantly recognised that calculator, a Litronix 1100 series, looks like the 1102. Here in Australia my dad brought home an 1100 in 1974 and we absolutely marvelled at it. It had a slide switch for 2 or 4 decimal places. The keys clicked loudly and had terrible keybounce regularly getting multiple digits on the screen. We replaced it with a japanese calculator with a cool blue VFD display less than a year later.

[GarageProfessor]

Two things I know now, birds are more interested in food than decimals, and I have no idea what the narrator speaks of "the metric system"...

Love these films Fran!

[wattheheck]

Oh, those cheaper prices (gas, food, etc.) wake up my memory! But wages were much less, too. Nice work on digitizing that old 16mm film, Fran!

[goodun]

At 4:16, " Let's say that your class was experimenting with some plant fertilizers"....funny, I was just talking with someone yesterday about having done that myself in grade school. We were experimenting with chemical fertilizer versus natural manure versus no fertilizer. I brought in some sheep crap from a nearby farm, which we used as fertilizer without composting it first, and it burned out the plant roots. The uncomposted sheep manure contained so much nitrogen that the potting soil smelled like ammonia!

[McTroyd]

Holy cow! They had the metric system in the 1970s too?? 😱 /s

[sguttag]

I see that the "metric system" got a mention!

[scottthomas]

You're doing an excellent job with the color correction...

[ar_xiv]

getting "look around you" vibes from this. it's easy to see how this format and tone can be just slightly tweaked with completely wrong information to make comedy gold

[goodun]

At 7:50, am I the only one here who was nearly driven to tears by the cost of a loaf of bread and a kilo of fish? 😭🤧

[alfredklek]

You're the best Frran. I love this stuff.

[michaelrider]

Those are some leggy looking sunflower seedlings. That sunny window isn't nearly enough light to start them. They're already falling over.

[adamp]

Such a great film on decimal math illustrating use with cash registers and calculators that are no long used since UPCs and self-checkout. And pre-inflation bread where a slice might round to zero cents.

[marmaly]

I have that exact calculator in the thumbnail. And it works!

[larrypriest]

Great cut! keep up the great work. It will be a shame if we loose these informative vids.

[theelmonk]

Decimal is just the base 10 counting system. What's meant by 'decimal' used as the name for the part after the point is the phrase 'decimal fraction'. So yeah, obviously they're 'just another way of writing fractions'.

[mrfoodarama]

Wow, your restoration did an incredible job

[emmeryncariglino]

4:44 love that classic Eberhard Faber Mongol action

[rodgercozart]

1970s department store music really gets me going.

[ReverendFuzzy]

Decimal was fun in it's day. But now I prefer hexidecimal. 😎