The New Old Thing: Powers of Ten

The New Old Thing: Powers of Ten

Every Friday on Yahoo Tech, The New Old Thing brings you recommendations of distinctly untimely — but still amazing! — cultural expression. Lots of sources (including us) will tell you what’s new and worthwhile. But only the New Old Thing tells you what’s not-new, but great, and available to you right now thanks to the magic of technology. (Your tips are welcome; send to rwalkeryn@yahoo.com.)

This week: Journalist Tom Roston (@DocSoupMan), who writes about documentary at the Doc Soup blog for PBS’s POV, recommends the 1968 short film Powers of Ten, by Ray and Charles Eames.

“A film dealing with the relative size of things in the universe,” Powers of Ten lasts only about nine minutes. It opens on a picnic scene and then every 10 seconds moves 10 times farther away — a trippy and surreal hyper-fast journey that soon has us in outer space.

If that sounds familiar, it's referenced in a similar passage in Men in Black.

“I first saw the Eames documentary in the early ’80s at school, no doubt on a projector, and it blew my mind,” Roston tells me. “I forgot about it for years, until the MIB version of it — showing an alien playing with marbles.

“I wonder if folks know about the original, or that they can see it on YouTube — and it’s just as mind-blowing. Plus, I love how the narrator reminds me of those old Disney docs, with Jiminy Cricket.”

Watch Powers of Ten here.