Re#5: Isn't that demo washer great?! And of course there was the matching dryer. And you're correct, these are silent films, often the only copy made. But I do have some commercially produced films with soundtracks in the pipeline.
Re#8: The Benton Harbor / St. Joe facility was absolutely massive. When the highway was realigned in the mid-50's to avoid driving through the factory campus, they actually built the new road as a straight shot -over the top- of the facility (top left corner of the pic below). The 1953 film captures this mid-way through construction, where they had finished the first elevated portion (in Part 2 there's a still image of a firetruck, and in the background is the elevated road and staircase employees would use). But you can see in Part 1 (where the "day's production" of all the boxes lined up) that the road ends in dirt.
Don't bother google-mapping any of this. It's all gone.
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