Rear Admiral Thomas F. Connolly outlines Project Transit, the first operational navigation satellite system for the use of submarines and surface vessels. He gives credit for this idea to Dr. William Guier and Dr. George Weiffenbach, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL), who realized that after the launch of Russian Sputnik I they could track its position by observing the Sputnik's Doppler shift. Frank McClure, heard of research at APL, visualized that the opposite would then be true: a satellite in orbit could determine a point of reference on earth. Dr. Richard Kershner, former head of the Terrier surface to air missile program at APL, headed the designing and building of the Transit satellite. Dr. Kershner explains why the Doppler technique is highly accurate, and an animated segment simplifies this phenomenon. Using a chart and a mock up, Dr. Kershner describes the construction and sections of Transit I and how it functions, including its solar cells, radiation shield, and telemetering system. Film clips taken at APL show testing of weights on the satellite as well as the shake test, centrifuge test, and heat/cold tests. Additional film clips show the tracking stations, to monitor the satellite's received signals, in Maryland, New Mexico, and Texas, plus two mobile vans stationed in Washington and Newfoundland. Rear Admiral Connolly discusses the future of this project as it adds more satellites and notes that this television program is the first to reveal Project Transit, "the practical navigational system of the future." Host Lynn Poole concludes this twelfth anniversary program by pointing out that it is the oldest program on network television. He reminisces about the four stations on the network (Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York) when the first program premiered on March 9, 1948. Poole also shows clips from "Fear," the oldest program kinescoped (October 3, 1950), the 1952 three-part series on outer space featuring Heinz Haber and Wernher Von Braun, and APL's Dr. Ralph E. Gibson's orbital shots of "The World from 70 Miles Up" (December 17, 1948). Poole quotes Isaiah Bowman, Johns Hopkins' president in 1948: "Television is an exciting new medium by which we can extend the knowledge of a university beyond the confines of the classroom and the campus to those who are curious about the world in which they live."

This is the final program of The Johns Hopkins University television series. In it, Dr. George Carter, geography professor at Hopkins, notes that Louis S.B. Leakey found evidence of the earliest primitive man and his tools in Kenya. He then displays revised maps of the world that reveal different land masses during glacial periods, thus allowing the Kenyan man to explore new lands and form colonies over a period of 100,000 years until the glaciers receded and the oceans returned. Dr. Carter discusses the transformation of Kenyan man from an isolated pygmy into modern man with regional or racial characteristics, such as the cave dwelling "Sinanthropus pekinesis" in northern China and the Swanscombe man in England. Glacial periods also created a land bridge near the Bering Strait, allowing animals and man to cross from Asia into North America. Tools found in the Americas plus the physical characteristics of early American Indians offer proof of waves of Asian migrations. Survivors of early man include the australoids, europids, and mongoloids. At the conclusion of the program, host Lynn Poole thanks members of the studio, university, and network for their hard work and dedication. John McClay, general manager of station WJZ-TV, expresses his gratitude to Johns Hopkins University and Lynn Poole especially. University president Milton S. Eisenhower thanks everyone responsible for the shows and announces reluctantly that "File 7" will not be on the air next season. He says that the "business of producing, creating, and presenting a weekly program has become increasingly burdensome," and because of the University's other commitments, it is unable to produce shows of the high quality expected of Johns Hopkins. Furthermore, Dr. Eisenhower hopes that this "will be only an interruption and not a permanent termination" of Hopkins educational television. Thirteen "File 7" reruns will be shown during the summer of 1960, but it will not be continued thereafter.

Lynn Poole identifies the equipment in Johns Hopkins University's ham radio "shack," (station W3GQF, for students with amateur radio licenses) and shows QSL cards from around the world. A film clip shows the International Geophysical Year Expedition's ham radio shack (KC4USA) in Antarctica. Dr. Edward Krieg, ham radio operator (W3CAY) and surgeon at Bon Secour Hospital in Baltimore, shows a film clip of a ham radio operators' "field day" and explains some of the ham radio lingo, such as "CQ" for hello and "7-3" for goodbye. He notes that some hams specialize in Morse code, a requirement for getting a radio license from the FCC. A film documents the DX (distance expedition) of six ham operators who sail to Navassa Island to set up a ham station (KC4AF) there. During the four days on the island, they made over 7,000 contacts in 75 different countries before going QRT (off the air). Another film shows the amateur ham operators' free emergency network to assist disaster organizations. Sam Harris' Rhododendron Swamp VHF Society of amateur ham experimenters is featured in another film clip. Perry Klein, a teenager credited with bouncing a signal off an artificial satellite, explains how he did it and plays a recording of the signal. He calls this form of communication "high frequency satellite scatter" or "satellite bounce." Klein recommends to viewers the book "How to Become a Radio Amateur." A film clip shows Joe Pratt, a homebound polio victim in Baltimore, MD, using his ham radio to make friends. Dr. Krieg concludes the program by promoting the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and their publication "QST."

Actor Joseph Potter, impersonating H.L. Mencken, opens this show on the "Sage of Baltimore," and quotes him throughout the program. Lynn Poole gives a pictorial account of Mencken's early life. Dr. Carl Bode, University of Maryland English professor, discusses Mencken as a critic of literature, society, and politics. He points out Mencken's contentiousness in his writing, especially in political criticism, such as his comments in 1912 on Baltimore mayor James H. Preston. Although Mencken stood up for New Realists such as Dreiser and Hemingway, he disliked the pretentiousness of many authors of his day and spoke out against bestsellers with no literary merit. With Mr. Potter's assistance, Dr. Bode describes events in Mencken's career as editor and columnist with "The Baltimore Sun" newspaper, co-editor with George Jean Nathan of "The Smart Set," editor and writer for "The American Mercury," and author of numerous books, such as "George Bernard Shaw" and "The American Language." Mr. Potter dramatizes a portion of Mencken's obituary for William Jennings Bryan, written after Bryan's death following the 1925 Scopes Trial. In 1926 the Watch and Ward Society of Boston forced off the newsstands Mencken's controversial "Hatrack" story in "The American Mercury," but Mencken prevailed. However, his unchanging views became trivial when he failed to recognize and understand the grave implications of the Great Depression or Hitler. Johns Hopkins professor emeritus Kemp Malone discusses Mencken's book "The American Language," which posits that American English was so different from British English that it should have a separate name. As an amateur philologist, Mencken also launched "American Speech," a learned journal, although he considered himself "a scout for scholars," not a scholar himself. In conclusion, Lynn Poole recommends Mencken's "A Carnival of Buncombe" for additional reading.

This program opens with a film of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Station in Beltsville, MD. In one greenhouse two groups of plants are receiving the same daytime conditions, but at night one is kept in total darkness while the other receives eight additional hours of incandescent light. Two four-year old loblolly pines show the results of this experiment. Dr. H. A. Borthwick explains that this is to study photoperiodism, or the effect of light on the plants' growth mechanism. In 1918 Wightman W. Garner and Harry A. Allard discovered that it is not the length of the day but rather of the night that is the determining factor in flower and seed production and growth of plants. Further experiments with lettuce, bean, tomato, and corn seeds test the effect of spectrum light colors and exposure on germination. A far red light creates a taller plant, and red light creates the tomato skin color. The mechanism in a plant the reacts to light is not chlorophyll but rather a two-way growth pigment, phytochrome, that acts as a switch with red and far red light. A film shows the process, using a spectrophotometer, by which this was determined. K. H. Norris demonstrates a spectrophotometer with a corn sample and explains the results with graphs. Two film clips show Sterling B. Hendricks doing further research on phytochromes to isolate their molecular structure and Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev at Beltsville, MD listening to Dr. Borthwick discuss crop growth issues.

Dr. George Carter, professor of geography at the Johns Hopkins University, discusses elephant drawings as the key to the controversy of whether or not the American Indian civilization was influenced by European and Asian civilizations. Examples of elephant drawings made between 1500 B.C. and 500 A.D. in such diverse places as England, Ceylon, China, and Siam are often stylized or abstract whether the animal is native to the country or not. Similarly, a Greek coin displays an elephant likeness. However, during this period in Central America, Mayan statues, carvings, and writings and Aztec art and rituals distinctly show elephants even though there were none to copy nor anyone to describe them. Thus Dr. Carter maintains that Asian peoples must have brought drawings or statues of elephants to Central America over 2,000 years ago. The proof he offers for this theory is the Thor Heyerdahl transpacific raft voyage (proving such a trip could be made in a primitive vessel), identical temples 12,000 miles apart in Mexico and Cambodia, identical Sumatran and Mexican folding bark religious books, identical fishhooks from Easter Island and California, physical attributes of Central American and Asian Indians (photos show one of each, both playing nose flutes), and plants appearing in lands too far from original sources to have blown there. In closing, Lynn Poole shows additional examples of elephant artwork found in the United States.

This program considers the stories of love, courtship, and marriage in Appalachia as told through folk songs. Virgil Sturgill sings "Sourwood Mountain," accompanied by Mike Seeger on banjo. Elwil Hughes strums a mountain dulcimer as she sings "Lonesome Dove." In the duet "Mountaineer's Courtship" with Hughes, Seeger plays the autoharp and Sturgill comments on the lyrics. Seeger sings "The Wedding Dress" with banjo accompaniment and "Aggravate Your Soul" with guitar. Sturgill plucks a mountain dulcimer and sings "Devilish Mary." Seeger, on guitar, sings "Everyday Dirt." The ensemble concludes with "Wish I Was Single Again" and "Careless Love."

Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower, president of the Johns Hopkins University, opens the show by explaining the 1701 replica model of the universe, the symbol of this oldest TV series on air. Assisted by costumed reenactors, Sidney Painter, professor of history at Johns Hopkins, describes the history of the Middle Ages, the life of knights, and the development of the feudal system. William the Norman spread the feudal system to Anglo-Saxon England where King John disregarded feudal customs. Dr. Painter tells how the Articles of the Barons, based on feudal law, were drafted by Stephen Langdon, Archbishop of Canterbury, granted under duress by John at Runneymeade in 1215, and ultimately revised into the Magna Carta, guaranteeing liberty to freemen and the Church of England and limiting the king's powers.

Lynn Poole discusses the era of American showboats and their on-water performances, such as the melodrama "The Drunkard." The first act of this play is performed in the studio by Naomi Evans, Betty Shaffer, Joe Bandiera, Mel Shaffer, Robert Adams, Maurice Sole, Jane Pollard, Walter Koehler, and Sonny Harmon, and Mr. Poole summarizes the remainder of the plot. Film clips show river boats and a few specialty numbers or entre acts that took place between play scenes. Vaudeville often followed the play, like the program's barbershop quartet singing "Bird in a Gilded Cage." In 1817 Noah Ludlow and his acting troupe boarded a keelboat and performed in halls onshore. Chapman's 1831 Floating Theater was the first pre-Civil War showboat to ply the rivers and entertain culture-hungry audiences with lectures, plays, religious revivals, circuses, and museums. Between 1870-1920, other riverboats, such as Augustus B. French's "New Sensation," were popular floating theaters, their calliopes dignaling the coming of the showboat into town.

This program takes place at Hughes Aircraft Company in California and features the Mobot Mark I, an electrohydraulic device that was developed as a lab technician for tasks too dangerous for humans. John Colp, of the Radiation Effects Lab at Sandia Corp., shows the mobot operating between the radiation room, where component parts are exposed to atomic radiation, and the hot cell, where the mobot analyzes the components' damage and tests them for malfunction. Design engineer Vaughn Thompson explains the design of the mobot's pincers, elbow rotation, and other movements and how the hydraulic system functions. Dr. John Clark, manager of the nuclear electronics lab at Hughes, displays a diagram of the operating system controlling the mobot and explains how the mobot's movements are controlled on the operator's console. A triaxial cable carries all signals via a multiplexing circuitry to the mobot. The mobot demonstrates its dexterity by putting a golf ball into a cup, and operator Stan Pearlman successfully guides the mobot through an exercise in finding a dumbbell hidden by Lynn Poole. Drawings of future mobots include models to fight fires and to explore underwater and lunar areas.