April 30, 1939: The Future Arrives at New York World’s Fair

Wired: April 30, 1939: The Future Arrives at New York World’s Fair

1939: The New York World’s Fair opens in Flushing Meadow Park. It will give visitors a glimpse of “the world of tomorrow” and shape industrial design, pop culture and the way the future would envision the future.

The fair ran two seasons, from 1939 to 1940. The most memorable exhibit was the General Motors Pavilion, and the most memorable feature in the General Motors Pavilion was a ride called the Futurama. People stood in line for hours to ride it and experience the exciting possibilities of life in the distant future — the year 1960.

The Futurama ride carried fair visitors past tiny, realistic landscapes while a narrator described the world of tomorrow. The effect was like catching a glimpse of the future from the window of an airplane. As you might expect from a ride sponsored by GM, the focus was on what roadways and transportation might look like in 20 years. ...

The following video takes you on a narrated trip through the Futurama. Remember that many people did not have cars and no interstate system. It is a fascinating look into Modernist visions of progress. 

Comments

[Virgil Vaduva]

It seems like a praise to humanist successes and the modernist era. Very cool stuff though! Imagination is always the first step to tomorrow.

[John]

And of course in the very midst of that techno-topia opitimism World War II began a few months later!

And the resultant world-wide catastrophe.

But even that just finished off the process of the destruction of Civilization which began with World War I.

In the midst of that the USA War department was renamed the Defense department, and the seeds were sown for the emergence of the permanent warfare state, or the military-industrial-"entertainment" complex, which now dominates every aspect of USA "culture", and by extension, the entire world.