News on Screen

Series

Series Name

Mining Review 1st Year

Issue

Issue No.

1

Date Released

Sep 1947

Length of issue (in feet)

796

Stories in this Issue:

• 1. Cutter loader
• 2. Five day week?
• 3. The miners’ song

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 3

Summary

BFI Summary - the Meco Moore cutter-loader is demonstrated and explained.
COI Commentary - You may know the Meco-Moore. I dare say there’s one in your pit. Or perhaps there will be soon if you’ve got the right conditions. You may think it a wonderful machine or just the opposite, but anyway this is where it’s made.
It was designed to speed up long wall working. M. S. Moore invented it about sixteen years ago, and he spent a long time experimenting and improving it before he was satisfied. A colliery company testing the method increased output by 5,500 tons a week.
Here’s the latest model. The two machines that make it up - cutter and loader - are joined together.
The Meco-Moore’s a big machine, made of hundreds of small parts. Here are some of the gear wheels being cut.
Even hair-breadth accuracy’s not enough. Ripping out coal’s a tough job, and the machinery’s got to be pretty strong. So essential parts are heat-treated for hours in gas furnaces and then quenched to give them that extra hardness.
Here’s a complete Meco-Moore, ready to go to a pit. They’re giving it a trial run. You can see how it shears, undercuts, loads and pulls itself along as it works.
This man’s particularly interested. He’s going to have to work it. He and his team have been helping to assemble it in the factory. BY the time they come to use it in the pit they’ll have got it well trained and eating out of their hands!
Well, that’s how they make them. Here’s the finished product on the job.

Keywords

Science and technology; Mining

Footage sources

Movietone

Written sources

The National Archives INF 6   /386 Used for synopsis
British Film Institute Databases
Viewing Copy - bfi screenonline
Hogenkamp, A. P., unpublished DPhil thesis   pxi.
BFI Screenonline synopsis   ID No.1223157

Credits:

Production Co.

Crown Film Unit

Camera

Fred Gamage

Director

Graham Wallace

Cutter

Jocelyn Jackson

Cutter

John Legard

Producer

John Taylor

Sound

K. Scrivener

Camera

Kenneth Reeves

Commentator

Maurice Denham

Sponsor

Ministry of Fuel and Power

Camera

William Chaston

This series is held by:

Film Archive

Name

British Film Institute (BFI)

Email

For BFI National Archive enquiries:
nonfictioncurators@bfi.org.uk
For commercial/footage reuse enquiries:
footage.films@bfi.org.uk

Web

http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web

Phone

020 7255 1444

Fax

020 7580 7503

Address

21 Stephen Street
London W1T 1LN

Notes

The BFI National Archive also preserves the original nitrate film copies of British Movietone News, British Paramount News, Empire News Bulletin, Gaumont British News, Gaumont Graphic, Gaumont Sound News and Universal News (the World War II years are covered by the Imperial War Museum).

Series held

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