The Age of Invention is a filmic poem about the coming of the machine age on the eve of World War I. A montage of images and sounds re-creates a bygone era--scratchy phonograph records, faded photographs, hand-cranked movie cameras, staccato Morse telegraph messages, rhythmic, rumbling steam pumps. Machines of every description were shaping peoples' lives; changing them more rapidly than at any other time in history; changing them forever.