Chicago, Illinois.

The Prudential Building a skyscraper.

I got the job just to look at the building for one day.

The assignment was go into this large office building, knock on people's doors, asking if we could film them and also behind the scenes.

How does the building function at the same time as the people go to work and don't really notice much about the building?

1976 Chicago, Illinois.

The Prudential Building.

One day in the life of that building mission back, a skyscraper must be tall, every inch of it.

All the force and power of altitude must be in it.

It must be a proud and soaring thing, rising without a single dissenting line.

Chicago architect Louis Sullivan said that back in the 18 eighties, when the very idea of a skyscraper was brand new.

Now there are thousands of skyscrapers, among them Prudential Building in Chicago, a typical American office building filled with typical American office workers.

Now a lot of people say that office buildings like this don't work that office workers feel like robots, that they're frustrated by their surroundings and as a result, that they're unproductive and inefficient.

But half of our work force is employed in buildings like these.

So if the work isn't being done here, where is it being done?

Find out how and why these structures house so many.

So successfully.

We came here to the Prudential Tower, Look at business as usual.

We came to see what people at work could show us aboutthe way office buildings work.

Still sure of what I'm going to say to her?

All right, Take a couple of large ones and stick him on on the spoon.

There.

Put a smaller a smaller flake right in front of them.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Yet that's it.

Give me a 64.

Yeah, all the way that it's getting there with a little bit more finessing we might be get Come over on this end.

Okay, Hold it.

Now.

Don't get nervous.

Hit the whole bill.

Shaking around a bit.

Release this section.

All right.

Bring it down.

Bring it down.

Slow Men's Washington.

Your best bet is the I C station.

These are all alike.

Coming down.

Wake up, Credential.

security emergency.

The only ones that are open in Chicago now, Marty, Marty, go up to the 22nd.

Florida got a smell of smoke Based.

All units, code 82 on the 22nd floor.

Base to all units, Insurance International.

Hold one moment.

Yes, sir.

When it's burnt.

Come on.

Where?

You forgot section.

Know when you left here?

The agreement Waas You pay me $100 a month over a nine month period and settled that.

Correct?

No interest.

I didn't push on it.

I gave you a year and 1/2.

Now, would you do me a favor and get off here?

Send me some money or I have no choice.

But this is your 10 4 Go ahead.

30.

Right in here.

What do you got?

Smoke.

Okay, let's drill.

That was fast.

Already moved in quick.

And I think couple more like this, we'll get down to routine.

Very good.

Thanks, guys.

Trouble.

Find Mobile six.

I have a five on a track on the 18th floor hot water tank exchange with Wait for it to take care of that.

Plus it's gotta be clean up.

Get a little messy right there.

Ho good check.

That's good.

Perfect.

Just like let's shoot it.

That's it.

That's not too shabby.

Okay, Stella.

Yeah, I'm tightening it up now.

One second.

Hold on.

Damn.

Okay, we're back in business.

Yeah.

What you've just seen is a sample of what takes place in every American office building every day today.

Structures like these are an essential part of our society.

But this wasn't always the case.

In fact, office buildings are a fairly new idea.

Actually, we lived out the first few 1000 years of recorded history without any offices at all.

Back in Egypt, scribe sat out in the sun keeping accounts on tablets of clay.

It wasn't until the Middle Ages that the first true offices showed up.

They were dank, cramped monastery cells were monks that day after day laboriously copying manuscript.

That arrangement didn't change much until the 18th century.

In England here, a new sort of office developed.

Charles Dickens described it in a Christmas carol.

It was a counting house like the one world Scrooge himself did his business.

Over the years, offices slowly improved as inventors came up with gadgets to make office work easier.

Like the roll top desk and the typewriter.

Few office buildings were higher than three or four stories in those days.

But eventually two great technological advances came together.

The elevator and the steel frame, and the result was the ancestor of all modern office buildings.

The home insurance building, which was built in Chicago, where else in 18 85 compared to today's giants, it wasn't much, but at the time it was all inspiring.

It Waas a skyscraper.

Thes buildings are not only places of business.

They're also neighborhoods in which social relationships develop.

Working together in these little communities, people get to know each other.

Hi, honey.

How are you?

Drink coffee sometimes when I'm feeling good morning, wild night.

But on Monday How are you doing, Linda?

All these workers are linked to each other by an extraordinary device.

The telephone insurance, international birds, Georgia darling, I returned your call at some people like birds.

Bits can hardly function without it, but I haven't Time right now calls.

That's why American Business needs 36 million telephones more than all the phones in France and England.

Put together a couple of dozen roses.

Okay, that's no problem at all.

I think we've got a terrific savings bond spot for you.

You know, we just saw Devon.

I really pretty excited about office.

Workers also talk with each other via another gadget, the computer.

There are already two million in American offices, and by 1990 experts say, half the office workers in the United States will be using them.

So today, office workers can contact other office workers anywhere in the world.

And that's another reason this building works yet another reason.

The fact that the building is a physically comfortable place to be temperature light a noise are well regulated end of the next generation of office buildings.

Individual tenants will be able to tailor climate and lighting to their particular needs To Chuck, Zeddicus and all the others at the Prudential Building, from the lowest sub basement to the roof opened their doors to us.

Let us peer over their shoulders.