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The New Century of Progress

HOW would you like to make a trip around the world in a day, stopping for an hour or two in England and Prance, seeing the sights of Italy, Spain, Ireland and Switzerland, paying a visit to Germany and China and catching a glimpse of such out-of-the-way places as Tunis and Morocco ?

This is part of the lure of the Century of Progress for 1934 which has been transformed into an international exposition by adding to the wonders of industry and science shown last year more than a dozen foreign villages, each a faithful miniature of the nation it represents.

These foreign communities, depicting the architecture, industries, customs and dress of most of the principal countries of the world, will give visitors an insight into other nations which could be obtained otherwise only by expensive travel or by weeks of intensive reading and research.
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Scientific HIGHLIGHTS of Chicago’s WORLD FAIR

It looks like the Chicago Fair were built especially for M-M fans. It is replete with the kind of mechanical wonders shown here.

While you’re casually viewing this display of priceless jewels an armed guard is watching your every move. If glass is broken, tray drops into vault.

If, when visiting the Fair, you’re curious as to the temperature at the moment, all you have to do is glance around the horizon and this world’s largest thermometer is sure to come within your view to tell you what you want to know. Read the rest of this entry »

Beard Clinic Maps Strategy for Shaving
HOW men should manipulate their razors to give themselves a smooth, clean shave is explained by dermatologists at the New York World’s Fair after a facial examination with an ingenious apparatus. On human faces, the experts say, the beard grows in different directions, which should be followed by the shaver as he uses his razor. Read the rest of this entry »

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Foreign Villages to Dominate 1934 World’s Fair

by WILLIAM L. COLLINS

Amid ultra-modern structures, old villages from far-off lands will be reproduced in detail at Chicago’s second edition of A Century of Progress, Resembling a League of Nations, the World’s Fair will present an entirely new exposition to attract visitors. Here is the first complete story of new attractions now being rushed to completion.

THE 1934 Century of Progress is bursting forth on the shores of Lake Michigan like an amazing League of Nations.
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Man of the Monsters

Here’s a genius who makes prehistoric monsters that “live.”

BY LUIS HOCHMAN

SOME learned scientists and explorers are content to probe Mother Earth for moldy remnants of prehistoric monsters, but not George Harold Messmore. This energetic little man with big ideas and accomplishments to match simply built himself a dinosaur factory in the heart of New York and proceeded to turn out his own staggering array of life-size, breathing, eating, fighting, snarling, replicas of the huge creatures that roamed the earth long before man had a tail to hang by. Powered by from one to 17 silent motors, operating a complicated mass of cogs, wheels, cams, chains, and bellows beneath canvas and papier-mache hides, huge dinosaurs, stegosaurs, allosaurs, saber-tooth tigers, mastodons and other monsters lash their tails, blink their eyes, gnash their teeth, swing their heads and limbs and emit frightful howls and screams. (Their vocal renditions issue from small phonograph recordings in their throats, but the secret of how these voice-noises were figured out still lies locked in Messmore’s brain.)
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Uncle Sam’s Scientists DISPLAY THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO PROGRESS AT GREAT WORLD’S FAIR

By George H. Dacy

ACCOMPLISHMENTS of United States Government scientists, during the past one hundred years, will be revealed by impressive exhibits at the Century of Progress exposition which opens at Chicago next month. A building of unusual design, decorated in bizarre color combinations, will house the remarkable display.

No scientific or technical exhibit ever set up exceeded in scope, variety, splendor, and magnitude the continuous performance Uncle Sam will stage in this windowless Federal Building with its trio of sky-pointing towers representing the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of our government.
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BUILDING A WORLD’S FAIR

By EDWIN TEALE

FIFTY MILLION visitors—a number equal to nearly half the population of the United States—are expected to journey next year to the New York World’s Fair. With lights and flame, motion and sound, this $175,000,-000 show will dramatize the progress and the promise of science. It will reveal the World of Tomorrow as it is foreseen today.

At this writing, the exposition site is a vast beehive of activity. The pounding of carpenters’ hammers, the crash of pile drivers, the roar of dump trucks, the machine-gun rat-a-tat of riveters fills the air. Buildings seem to rise overnight. A thousand and one projects are being carried out at the same time. Roads, bridges, artificial lakes, transplanted forests, synthetic soils appear as though by magic. The whole story of the 1939 World’s Fair is a story of science in action.
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Scenes In Miniature

Hints on constructing small dioramas for home decorations, window displays, and advertising or educational purposes
By HERBERT LOZIER

IF YOU were able to visit the New York World’s Fair, you must have been impressed by the lavish use throughout the entire exhibition of large and small dioramas or miniature scenes. In almost every building these have been used to portray outstanding events, methods of manufacture, historic places, and all kinds of information in vivid, colorful, three-dimensional form.
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BIG MAP OF OHIO AT WORLDS FAIR

Ohio’s geography is explained to World’s Fair visitors by a mechanical map of pressed wood and glass, twelve feet square, provided with 1,302 indexed push buttons. To find any city, river, or point of historical interest, the user pushes a button and one or more squares are instantly illuminated.

Hidden Motors Give Life to Prehistoric Monsters

Saber-toothed tigers, giant ground sloths, and dinosaurs, inhabitants of the earth millions of years ago, have been reproduced mechanically by the New York firm of Mess-more and Damon for exhibition this summer at the Chicago World’s Fair. Within a huge hemisphere of metal, they will give visitors a glimpse of the world as it was long before man appeared. (P.S.M., June ‘32, p. 16.) Controlled electrically, the mechanical monsters swing their heads, roll their eyes, breathe, snarl, roar, and grunt in realistic fashion. A complicated mass of cogs, wheels, bellows, and silent motors produces the life-like sounds and motions. Beneath the canvas and papier-mache hide of each animal there are from one to sixteen electric motors. An operator controls the actions of the exhibits. At the World’s Fair, they will be seen in an environment of prehistoric vegetation.

While not quite to this scale, Greg Leyh had an amazing pair of 9-foot tall Tesla Coils this weekend at Maker Faire.

Maker Faire was unbelievably cool and wonderful. All of the exhibits were great and the everybody was incredibly warm and generous. It was a very heartening experience. If you can, I highly recommend you go when they do it all again in Austin this October.

Giant Sparks To Thrill Visitors At Exposition

PEERING into a cylindrical cage eighty feet in diameter and equally tall, visitors to the international exposition at Paris, France, next summer, will see one of the world’s most powerful high-voltage electric generators in action. Ten-foot-long sparks will snap between huge brass spheres mounted on insulating pillars, with a sound like the cracking of a giant whip. Should any of the sparks go astray, they will be harmlessly grounded by the metal cage, which safeguards the spectators from their terrific power. Operators will control the spectacular display from within the hollow spheres, where, strangely enough, they will be equally safe.
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Living LIGHT Effects Marvel of World Fair

by WILLIAM J. HARRIS

Gigantic waterfalls cascading down the sides of buildings—huge towers of living flame—buildings glowing in all the brilliantly flickering shades of the rainbow—these are among the marvelous lighting effects created for the Chicago World’s Fair, all produced by methods so simple that the amateur constructor can easily duplicate them as described here.

WHEN the giant telescope at Yerkes Observatory picks up a flash of light from the star Arcturus on the night of June 1, 1933, and flashes it as an electrical impulse to Chicago to start the second Chicago World’s Fair it will turn on, among other things, the most amazing collection of electrical effects the world has ever seen.
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