Ruttmann, Walter (1889–1941)

Born in Frankfurt, Ruttmann studied architecture and design, and started his career as a painter and lithographer before turning to film. His earliest films, Lichtspiel: Opus I–IV (1921–1925), were composed of animated shapes made of cardboard, wood, and plasticine. Some of these films were hand-colored. They are quite close in conception and execution to the experiments in "absolute film" – or "optical music" – developed by Hans Richter (the Rhythmus series) and Viking Eggeling (Diagonal Symphony, 1922) in the early 1920s. The success of the Lichtspiel series earned Ruttmann commercial film commissions. He designed some special effects for Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette animation The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) and made an animated sequence for Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen (1924). Ruttman’s fame, however, rests on his participation in Berlin: Symphonie of a Great City (Berlin: Simphonie der Grossstadt, 1927), an emblematic city film scripted by Carl Mayer and filmed mostly by Karl Freund, which Ruttmann himself edited. Occasionally criticized for its detached, superficial rendition of urban life, the film was successful with audiences and immensely influential on subsequent filmmakers.

Fixing a Boiler with CFD

This article focuses on carryover at a paper mill that had been solved using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to visualize flow within the boiler. Technicians had tried adjusting airflow and firing arrangements without success. They turned the problem over to analysts who simulated the airflow within the boiler using CFD. An animated sequence of streamlines showing airflow provided engineers with a clear understanding of exactly what was happening inside the boiler, making it relatively easy to adjust operating conditions and solve the problem. McDermott analysts use FIELDVIEW, a commercial post-processing program from Intelligent Light in Lyndhurst, NJ. With the software, the analyst can create three-dimensional perspective views with hidden-line removal and light shading. She or He can trace the path of a marker traveling along with the fluid through a series of animated views. The analysts made a second FIELDVIEW movie of the airflow conditions with the new arrangement, showing the elimination of the center core. They played the two movies simultaneously on two monitors set side-by-side to demonstrate for the customer’s engineers how the recommended changes would solve the problem.