The video collection "Treasures From American Film Archives" preserves the two key sequences from this movie, which originally was made as a training film for Western Union employees. Their keyboard operators were once one of the nation's most essential occupations, on whom important communications of all kinds depended to get through quickly and accurately.
The story in "Accuracy First" is a simple cautionary tale about what can go wrong through mistakes that would be easy to make, using a stock exchange transaction as an example. The part of the movie that is omitted from the video release is supposed to have been of a purely technical nature, but even parts of what remains take some concentration to follow closely. The story part is clear enough, but the explanations of the operators' errors rather assume at least some working knowledge of telegraphy. It's rather an education in itself seeing how sharp these operators had to be, when a moment of inattentiveness could result in a subtle slip-up.
Since telegraphy long ago ceased to have the crucial importance that it once had, a movie like this is in one sense a curiosity. But of the routines, occupations, and devices that are currently central to our daily lives, how many of them could well be even more archaic and outmoded several decades from now? Certainly, the same exhortations given here to Western Union's keyboard operators could well apply, at least in a general sense, to those whose occupations serve a similar role today.
The story in "Accuracy First" is a simple cautionary tale about what can go wrong through mistakes that would be easy to make, using a stock exchange transaction as an example. The part of the movie that is omitted from the video release is supposed to have been of a purely technical nature, but even parts of what remains take some concentration to follow closely. The story part is clear enough, but the explanations of the operators' errors rather assume at least some working knowledge of telegraphy. It's rather an education in itself seeing how sharp these operators had to be, when a moment of inattentiveness could result in a subtle slip-up.
Since telegraphy long ago ceased to have the crucial importance that it once had, a movie like this is in one sense a curiosity. But of the routines, occupations, and devices that are currently central to our daily lives, how many of them could well be even more archaic and outmoded several decades from now? Certainly, the same exhortations given here to Western Union's keyboard operators could well apply, at least in a general sense, to those whose occupations serve a similar role today.
