Opening at the scene of a picnic in a Chicago park, then gradually zooming out to encompass a view 100 million light years away before magnifying down again to a single proton, this classic 1977 short documentary by the legendary husband-and-wife design team Charles and Ray Eames uses exponential powers of ten to contextualise the scale of the known universe and chart the limits of human understanding. An ‘adventure in magnitudes’, Powers of Ten has been used to teach millions and millions about the cosmos and the microcosmic, and remains an extraordinary journey nearly 40 years later.

©1977 Eames Office LLC. Used by permission of the Eames Office. All rights reserved.