The World of Tomorrow
AMERICA’S largest city next year will stage the world’s largest fair, a $150,000,000 exposition costing about three times as much as Chicago’s famed Century of Progress.
In addition to costing three times as much, the New York fair will be three times as big as the Chicago fair. The Century of Progress covered 424 acres. The New York World’s Fair of 1939 will extend over 1,216 acres.
In fact, New Yorkers point out happily, if Chicago’s Columbian Exposition and Century of Progress were combined, both of them together would not be as large in area or as costly as the fair New York is planning. And whereas the Century of Progress attracted about 38,650,-000 visitors in two seasons, New York expects to entertain 50,000,000 visitors in six months.
Building the world of tomorrow will be the New York fair’s central theme and when it opens next April 30, just 150 years after the inauguration of George Washington in New York City as our first president, it will present an example of man-made magic as amazing as the blooming of a lily out of the mire. For Flushing Meadow Park, the exposition site on Long Island, was formerly a city dump and this fair is rising out of a mountain of ashes to demonstrate how the tools and processes and knowledge of today can be used to create a better world tomorrow.
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This exposition looks like a blast, I wish they still did things like this.
History’s Biggest Show
REVIEWS WORLD’S GREATEST CENTURY
By Edwin Teale
AFTER a forty-year journey through space, a reddish ray of starlight has just struck a photo-electric cell and flashed on the lights of a $25,000,000 extravaganza of science, the Century of Progress Exposition at Chicago.
Islands to accommodate the show, were built in the waters of Lake Michigan. Grass and trees and towering buildings cover them and hundreds of thousands of glowing, gas-filled tubes illuminate the great exposition.
Covering 338 acres, the thousands of exhibits compress into the scope of an exposition the drama and wonder of history’s most amazing century of scientific advance. Under your eyes, crude rubber changes into auto tires; casein, extracted from milk, becomes a fountain pen; piles of parts turn into automobiles that speed away under their own power.
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Fountains of Flame Played Like a Pipe Organ
By KENNETH M. SWEZEY
WATER, light, flame, music, and fireworks, synchronized into a vast extravaganza, are providing new entertainment thrills nightly as one of the most spectacular outdoor attractions of the New York World’s Fair.
This Lagoon of Nations display centers in a giant fountain which rises from an oval lake two blocks wide by four blocks long. Water, geysering in beautiful patterns from 1,400 nozzles, is painted in constantly changing rainbow hues by batteries of powerful electric lights from below. At climaxes in a performance, towering gas flames roar through the columns of scintillating water, from more than a hundred jets. Showers of fireworks burst overhead. Stirring music thunders an accompaniment to the display from the heart of the fountain.
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Very cool 25 page photo spread of the World’s Fair from a 1965 National Geographic.
Check out the odd assortment of items in the time capsule on page 22 (larger view). Among other things it has a rather clunky looking computer memory module, birth control pills, a pack of cigarettes and a bikini.
New York World’s Fair 1964-1965
CLASSROOM IN A CARNIVAL. A journey round the world. A look back in time, and a window on the future. A treasure house of religious faiths. A procession of products. And a dream of “Peace through Understanding.”
This is the New York World’s Fair of 1964-1965. Here you can see how atoms collide in the first public demonstration of controlled nuclear fusion, at General Electric. Listen to the rustle of stars as picked up by a radiotele-scope at Ford. Take a journey into space, booked by the Martin Company in the Hall of Science. See how your voice “looks” on TV at the Bell System (page 515).
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Is This the Motor Car of Tomorrow?
REPLETE with striking innovations, a motor car of tomorrow that is ready to roll on the highways of today, is part of the Electric Utilities exhibit at the New York World’s Fair. Within an air-conditioned, noiseless body, the driver sits behind an instrument panel holding more than, a score of dials and switches.
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What to do for a splitting backache…
… automated caveman gets a rear-end drive
Despite his wide-open situation, the caveman on the preceding page is feeling no pain.
With fellow tribesmen, he will soon be settling down for a stay in the Ford Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. Members of the “clan grin, groan, and grunt, view a giant bear with alarm, point, push, and haul a dead mammoth, draw wall pictures, and create fire. One of them invents the wheel.
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“one smart inventor has devised a ship that takes passengers to Venus, which is part of the way to the moon”
Wow, I had no idea Venus was so close!
And don’t forget: “These are no sissy rides, and if it’s a thrill you want, you’ll get it at the New York World’s Fair!”
Sensational THRILL RIDES Invented for N.Y. World Fair
HOW would you like to experience the thrill of a parachute jump— without the accompanying dangers of the ‘chute failing to open, of being blown out to sea or of landing in a tree? Well, that thrill will be yours if you are one of the lucky 60,000,000 expected to visit the New York World’s Fair after it opens on April 30. As a matter of fact, a safe parachute jump will be only one of the many sensations ingenious engineers have invented for the Fair visitor’s amusement. If the ‘chute jump seems tame, try the aerial ship which the rider can pilot himself. It’s safe, of course, because a cable keeps the ship anchored to a revolving pole, but you can turn or stall in a steep climb or experience the sensation of a power dive, if you are up to it.
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A NEW LANDMARK FOR BRUSSELS…
THE ATOMIUM
By G. H. Davis
SINCE THE DAYS of the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, every large world’s fair has had some spectacular piece of architecture as a central attraction. The 1851 exhibition had its Crystal Palace, the 1889 exhibition in Paris produced the Eiffel Tower, the 1939 fair in New York had the Trylon and Perisphere, and now the Brussels Universal and International Exhibition of 1958 will have its Atomium—-probably the strangest structure of them all.
This oddity, to symbolize the atom age, will be 334 feet high and represents a metal crystal enlarged about 200 billion times. It was originally designed to be 460 feet high but this plan had to be abandoned because of the danger to aircraft.
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SCIENCE SECRETS REVEALED
At NEW YORK WORLDS FAIR
Cosmic rays, electronic energy and light power axe but a few of the invisible influences harnessed by science, whose magic show dramatizes its researches and discoveries for the Fair’s sixty-million visitors. Here’s a partial review to whet your appetite for this fascinating scientific show.
by Stanley Gerstin
SCIENTISTS at the New York World’s Fair are putting on a show that makes Aladdin and his magic lamp look like a piker!
They are in control of invisible forces whose secrets they use to baffle, amaze and entertain! So don’t take it on the lam if you hear your voice come in the door and go out the window. And don’t see your eye doctor if you suddenly observe an electric fan reverse its motion and cut capers when mesmerized by a flickering light. For this is part of the show—and the show will have only just begun. Shortly, a gigantic Frankenstein of aluminum, obeying the barked commands of its human director, will take over as a master of ceremonies in this fantastic temple of science.
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For a lot more info check out this page on the amazing New York Worlds Fair ‘64 site.
Inside IBM’s World’s Fair ‘Egg’
FROM a distance, it looks like the storage tank for the Festival of Gas. But as New York World’s Fair visitors draw nearer, they find themselves in a people trap—IBM’s wonderfully zany exhibit pavilion, featuring the Information Machine.
It’s really a theater that sits atop a forest of 45 stylized, 32-foot-high sheet-metal trees. Their cleverly dovetailed branches support 14,000 gray and green Plexiglas leaves, forming a continuous, one-acre canopy.
You join a couple of thousand others who are queueing up on a complex of catwalks suspended above a shallow pool. The ramps lead to a 45-degree tilted grandstand, holding 500 spectators. Eventually, you take your place on what IBM calls the “people wall.” Its 12 tiers of seats are no sooner filled than an M.C. in white tie and tails comes gliding down above you in a “bucket.” He promises that in the next 12 minutes you’ll learn that computers make use of everyday methods we all use in our daily lives to solve complicated problems.
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