Thu, Apr 26 2012
This week marks the anniversaries of the opening days for both the 1939 – 1940 and the 1964 – 1965 World’s Fairs. Both events were cultural achievements in the realms of science, technology, and global citizenship, introducing tens of millions of visitors to cutting edge technological advancements and instilling hope in many for a better future. There is a lot of literature about these fairs and their legacy on the web and in published media, so we won’t be duplicating those efforts. Rather, we’d like to honor them in a popular contemporary fashion: with a Best, Worst, and Ugly list.
1939 – 1940 World’s Fair
When you think of a World’s Fair, the images you conjure in your mind are probably from this one. The largest fair in US history, its hopeful theme – the “World of Tomorrow” – was intended to inspire down trodden Americans still reeling from the financial turmoil of the previous six year. The Fair’s exhibitors took full advantage of this direction, constructing awe-inspiring pavilions that housed cutting edge products, technology, and visions of the future.
The Best: General Motors’ Futurama
This 36,000 square foot exhibit space was designed to depict the world 20 years in the future, as envisioned by GM and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes. Visitors were transported over a huge diorama of the United States, as a narrator described this futuristic vision. The features of the diorama gradually grew larger as the audience progressed through it, becoming life sized models of cars, buildings, and city streets. Since GM was the sponsor, the focus of the exhibit were its modeled motorways, which predicted the future of transit and suburban expansion. It envisioned a future utopia regulated by state-of-the-art technology and sophisticated transportation networks, and provided a much needed jolt of inspiration for Americans grappling with effects of the Great Depression. GM would follow up on the success of its 1939 exhibit with an even farther reaching Futurama II in 1964. The sequel was an equally huge success, but focused on Space Travel and simulating visits to the moon.
The Worst: Smell-O-Vision
The use of scents to “enhance” films first appeared in 1916 when the Family Theater in Forest City, Pennsylvania treated the audience of a Rose Bowl game to the scent of rose oil. Hans Laube refined scented cinema with his invention of Smellovision — a system of pipes connected to each seat in a theatre and controlled by the projectionist. Laube introduced his invention at the World’s Fair, tickling the olfactory senses of thousands of visitors and predicting a redolent future for film goers. Unfortunately for him, technical difficulties relating to timing, disbursement of scents, and lingering odors made the system more of a distraction than an immersing innovation.
The Ugly: Elektro and his robot dog Sparko
In addition to it’s famous time capsules that still sit 50 feet below Flushing Meadow Park, Westinghouse Electric Corporation’s other big showcase in 1939 was Elektro, the United State’s first robot. At 7-feet tall, Elektro could walk by voice command, speak about 700 different prerecorded words, blow up balloons, move his head, arms, and fingers, and most important to the engineers at Westinghouse, smoke cigarettes. All of these features were incredible at the time, but they were housed in the ugliest humanoid body ever. Actually, this is the ugliest humanoid body ever, but Elektro’s was close. The following year Westinghouse introduced Elektro’s motorized companion, Sparko. It could bark, sit, and beg just like a real dog, but looked like a mailbox with legs.
1964 – 1965 World’s Fair
Nearly thirty years after fairgoers were introduced to the world of tomorrow, a group of New York businessmen who had attended the 1939 World’s Fair as children decided to give their kids the same opportunity. Thus the 1964 – 1965 World’s Fair was born. This time the fair organizers dropped the thematic focus on technological innovation and a new theme, “Peace through Understanding,” was adopted to reflect a greater focus on world cultures and global interconnectedness.
The Best: IBM’s ‘Egg’ Pavilion
By 1964 IBM was nearly 100 years old and one of the largest technology companies in the world. As a leader in computer technology and artificial intelligence, IBM used it’s presence at the World’s Fair to introduce the general public to the future of computer systems and provided what was for many their first interaction with computers. The primary exhibit was housed in an enormous egg-like structure, which attendees in stadium seating were hoisted into from hydraulic lifts below. Within the egg, they were shown films about the workings of computer logic and data processing machines on nine giant screens. Other areas of the pavilion gave visitors the opportunity to see and occasionally interact with the latest IBM computers, including a display that translated Russian into English, and a 360-Series mainframe computer that could tell them what events occurred on their birthday.
The Worst: The Texas Pavilion
With live shows such as “To Broadway With Love”, arcades and discotheques, the Texas Pavilion featured less compelling exhibits than its technologically advanced and culturally diverse neighbors. Attendees had little incentive to pay extra for shows when free entertainment and futuristic attractions were right next door. Poor attendance to its primary features lead to the closure of nearby snack bars and souvenir shops, leaving the pavilion virtually deserted much of the time and resulting in many of its attractions being shut down early.
The Ugly: Financial mismanagement
True this was not an exhibit, but it was damn controversial. The Fair Corporation booked receipts from the sale of advanced tickets for both the 1964 and 1965 seasons entirely against the first, making it appear as if there was plenty of cash, when in fact they had to borrow money during the second season. Despite lower than expected attendance (70 million were forecast for the entire Fair, but only 44 million actually came) the fair organizers continued to spend on advertisements and new exhibitions, putting the fair on the verge of bankruptcy by the end of the 1964 season. While the previous World’s Fair also had financial difficulties and payed 40 cents for every dollar loaned by its bond investors, the 1964 – 1965 World’s Fair was only able to pay back 19.2 cents for every dollar. Ouch…
