On Saturday May 4, archivist, author, and Prelinger Library principal Megan Prelinger graces Other Cinema/ATA Gallery again with Inside the Machine, her hour-long slideshow on the visualization of 20th Century electronic technology. Anticipating her forthcoming book, Megan has unearthed modernist artists who ushered in the Electronic Age with their visionary graphics, demonstrating that design and technology were mutual contextualizers in the mid-century modern era.

After her interactive show-and-tell, these mid-century 16mm films also bear on tonight’s theme: IBM’s 1953 Piercing the Unknown, the supremely campy 1945 Principles of Electricity, Philco’s 1967 Year 1999, an anomalous industrial from Underwriter Labs, and even a outrageous clip of Orson Welles in the seminal Future Shock.

And, as always, free VHS, vinyl, and bike helmets.