Film, Powers of Ten, 1977

Powers of Ten (1977) is a short film written and directed by the designers Charles and Ray Eames. An adaptation of Kees Boeke’s 1957 book Cosmic View, the nine-minute film depicts the relative scale of the universe in power of ten. Powers of Ten promotes a type of rich, interdisciplinary thought that approaches ideas from multiple interrelated perspectives, ranging from the infinitesimal to the cosmic, as well as the orders of magnitude in between. Beginning a mythical journey into space with a lakeside picnic in Chicago as its starting point, the film transports viewers to the outer edges of the universe by increasing the distance from earth ten times every ten seconds. Returning to earth with breathtaking speed, the film then pictures a voyage into the human body, ending inside a carbon atom in the hand of a man sleeping at the picnic.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Tools: Extending Our Reach.