Saturday, April 04, 2009

New York World's Fair Re-revisited!

Welcome back to the '64 World's Fair. "Peace Through Understanding", baby!

Here's a view of the roof ("Moondeck"!) of the Eastman Kodak pavilion, which had hills and valleys, and resembled some strange Martian city with an awesome skate park. Rad! You had many great views of the Fair from up here, and hopefully used lots of rolls of Kodak film.


The Westinghouse exhibit displayed a replica of the time capsule that was buried during the 1939/40 Fair. That little girl is scratching her name into it! GET HER! Elsewhere, there was a new capsule that documented the latest notable inventions and information: "... television, wonder drugs, nuclear explosions, the exploration of space. The new Time Capsule will include 50,000 pages of microfilmed information on these and other scientific and social advances. Visitors may sign a book that will go into the capsule."


Here's a view that may have been taken from the Swiss Sky Ride, looking towards the New York State pavilion. The open-air rotunda had a suspension roof made up of huge colored plastic panels, and the floor was a giant terrazo map of the state.


The U.S. was space-crazy in the 60's, with the goal to reach the moon by the end of the decade. I wonder if we ever made it? Over at the U.S. Space Park, you could feast your eyes on all kinds of sexy hardware designed to take man higher and faster than ever before. Like this X-15 rocket plane, which set speed and altitude records ... reaching the edge of outer space and returning with valuable data used in aircraft and spacecraft design. Even today it still holds the world record for the fastest speed ever reached by a manned aircraft.


Also on view over at the U.S. Space Park, you could see "... a Project Mercury spaceship which has orbited the earth, a Gemini two-man spacecraft, a model of the Apollo, which will carry men to the moon, and a Mercury capsule in which youngsters may take a simulated space ride. Also shown are... lunar and interplanetary satellites, and Thor-Delta, Atlas and Titan II rockets. College science majors act as guides." College science majors, WOW!


EXTRA! EXTRA! If you are curious about what's left of the '64 World's Fair, please check out this EXCELLENT writeup, courtesy of Ed Crimmins at his "Daily Kos" blog. I am happy that he used a few of my photos for his well-researched photo essay. Check it out HERE!

6 comments:

Chiana said...

Rad! hehe

The 3rd pic down is a super nice scenic shot. The others are interesting too, love the rocket and rocket plane, how awesome! I so would've geeked on those.

PTA Transit Authority said...

What a place, What a fair. What fantastic pics. Beauties.

Vintage Disneyland Tickets said...

Love these! Didn't know that about the X-15 rocket plane, thanks! Hey, great thorough writeup by Ed Crimmins, thanks for the link.

Thufer said...

if ever there was a set of memories that slap me for not going to the fair, this is that set. i consider myself less whole for never getting to the fair and having experienced it first hand. nice pictures and a wonderful introspective. thank you.

Nancy said...

these are so cool...

i love the rockets :) we saw the Space Shuttle Enterprise at the 1984 World Fair in New Orleans.

science fiction is my favorite genre for books and movies, along with Tomorrowland and EPCOT CENTER Future World

Jim said...

That's the Right Stuff. Way to push the envelope and not screw the pooch.