I was that boy, not literally, but I was about that age when we attended the 64 World's Fair. It had a lasting, lifelong affect on that young boy, on me.
I'm sure as a kid you must have been in awe and full of pride, but are your feelings more nuanced these days? Did you feel like you had been manipulated the more you grew?
WOW. The 50's and 60's. When progress meant highways, concrete, cars and malls. Today, people shop online just to avoid highways, concrete, cars and malls.
Vernatene Banks You know the concept of ordering your product to be delivered by your door has been around, since, even the dawn of department stores, right? We even had this nifty concept called "mail delivery" before that.
It's haunting to me. This was never possible under the the systems of capitalism. Made for investors and grant money dressing up as a proud, superhuman vision of society for kids and using their impressions to advance the private venture's of unaccountable industry. Haunting
@user-hy9it2lm9k Cuba created 4 vaccines and wanted to distribute them to the world for free. No homeless there. Vietnam and China are ascendant. Africa is shuffling off the cuffs placement them by France and the US. I'd encourage you and others to look deeper. The West is a lecherous dominator full of opportunists and inheritors of vast fortune, who distribute arms and orders against any country willing to offer a better alternative. Read The Ending of Hereditary American Fortunes and get back to me
THANKS for this video ... I soooooo remember this ride when my parents took me to the World's Fair. I was 10 years old. I also had a hat with the feather ....what great memories I have of that extraordinary experience !
i dont mean to be offtopic but does anyone know of a method to get back into an instagram account? I was stupid forgot my login password. I would appreciate any help you can give me.
@Damian Israel I really appreciate your reply. I found the site on google and Im in the hacking process atm. Takes a while so I will reply here later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
Bello I mean everyone having them Like to go to the store and get bread The jet packs your referring to can only fly for about 4 minutes I mean the kind George Jetson had
I think it was less a promise that the previous generation would provide it to us... and more that we the future generations would build it for ourselves. Perhaps they should be upset with us and not the other way around. That said... we're almost to mars.. just a slight delay.
Anyone else kinda freaked out about the pure ambition of this video? We're getting a glimpse into a grim future: "These forest highways now are bringing to the most depths of the tropic world the goods and materials of progress and prosperity..."
kluckitblog See, it's cynics like you being given a free voice is the reason we don't have jetpacks, and why we haven't gone to the moon since the 70's. Disgusting cynics sucking the joy and wonder out of every dream, browbeating everybody until nobody has the ambition to do anything beyond maintaining the status quo. Nobody has hope for a better tomorrow thanks to the cynicism of people like you. Unless you have a good solution to a problem, you should keep your opinions to yourself. I'm sick of hearing about the plight of the rainforests; at this point I'd rather see them slashed, burned, and paved over rather than listen to whiny, tree-hugging liberals preach about them for the rest of my life.
Thoralmir Lol you need me sir. You need me and people like me more than you will ever realize. We haven't gone to the moon since the 70s because we now spend 0.5% of our budget on NASA as compared to 4.41% in the 60s. Those spending cuts do not come from "tree-hugging liberals". Private sector is taking over space exploration which is fine for now because the industry is led by people like Elon Musk (SpaceX), who believe in finding more efficient ways of using clean energy (Tesla). You see, while you sit here and scream into your computer about the past, people who question the status quo (like me) end up coming up with better ways to move forward, creating the future rather than talking about it. This video shows fantastic vision for its time, but if you are still stuck on this vision then you have been left far behind my friend.
kluckitblog There's nothing wrong with being stuck in the past. The late 50s to mid 60s vision of the future is not as outdated and overemphasized as you may think, people still dream of a future brimming with flying cars, automated service robots and space age cities. In fact, look up The Venus Project, you'll be surprised how much it's designs are directly influenced by things found in this video and it is the only project I know trying to literally build a city of tomorrow. The past is our muse for the future.
+The RetroGrade Why were automated service robots so important in this vision? Who was doing most of the service jobs at the time? A walkable city can be accessed without paying money, a city only accessible with cars costs money just to get around in, while eight and twelve lane highways can be used to remove certain neighborhoods, and separate some from others - to a carless person, a superhighway is the same as a wall.
I was an attendant at that ride. When they recorded this, the 12 year old shown (Brian McClaine) was given motion sickness pills and a shot of bourbon to keep him calm. He was hyper active and somewhat "slow", but he was the kid of a higher-up at GM. Later on, he stole a car and got in a wreck, but the story was kept quiet.
@@brianarbenz1329I don’t think a shot of bourbon at 12 years old means you’ll be a criminal, and giving kids hard liquor to help them sleep or for sore throats was a common thing back then, so wouldn’t even blame the parents all that much
The complete film ran 26 minutes, and my recording of the soundtrack is on a reel to reel tape, so it would have to be downloaded to a digital format. The film basically focused on a 12 year old running around the NY World's Fair -- you see him as a blonde kid on the GM ride. Yes, I did see Futurama II in 1965, the ride itself was about 15 minutes. That was 50 years ago and I was 12, as well. Besides the film from GM there were other films like TO THE FAIR, and one by US Steel called HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR, which was the most informative of all the 1964-1965 NY Fair films made--I have that film --given to me my US Steel back in 1970.
There was one good thing about the BP Gulf oil spill though - It stopped the draining of the coastal wetlands along the Gulf shoreline, which were up until then being lost at the rate of 15 acres an hour. This has resumed unfortunately, but in a much more limited rate, given that people believe the pace is now a radioactive, poisoned and toxic wasteland and coastal property is less desirable.
Reminds me of the "Horizons" ride that used to be at Disney's EPCOT Center. Mission Space now sits where Horizons used to be. Would rather have Horizons back.
I was born in 1960 and grew up during the space race. I was going to live in a city under the ocean (think Sealab 2020) and travel regularly to my job on the moon. Now I'm and electrical engineer and work out of my home office in Pennsylvania. Could be worse. Could be better.
I remember waiting like an hour and a half to go in this exhibit...I wanted to live in those cantilevered apartments, everything was so modern in the 60s, this was probably the peak of technological optimism....
The narrator of this exhibit was Alexander Scourby who became a familiar voice on the National Geographic specials. But in this exhibit, he got too excited too often. I saw this in-person when I was 9 years old and don't remember him this hyper. Gee whizz Alex...dial it back!!
Oddly enough, GM's future city at the end does include provision for making "public transportation more convenient" with huge multilevel terminals. Naturally there's also plenty of parking at those terminals. At 6:08, you'll see a futuristic train traveling the expressway median. I was really surprised to even hear public transit mentioned, never mind see that train. Then again, GM profited handsomely by replacing streetcars with its buses, and probably saw the chance to build the transit equipment. Although Chicago pioneered placing rapid transit in expressway medians in the late fifties, the fairs' organizer Robert Moses did all he could to starve NYC's critical subway system and prevent it's expansion. He ignored pleas to include mass transit lines in expressway medians and construct bridges to allow future addition of commuter rail. Public policy has as much, if not a greater role in the sorry state of our rail transit. Together with LaGuardia's shutdown of NYC's extensive streetcar system, Moses did more to doom the NY region to traffic strangulation than only other individual.
Internet, advanced robotics, moon landings, constant advances in food science, space exploration, deep sea exploration, industrial improvements, all-in-one agriculture mega-machines, international antarctic exploration labs, near-future-plans of interplanetary manned missions... I can't wait for all of those things to be invented! Don't fear optimism and hope my friend! "Man must chart his own course into tomorrow. A course that frees the mind and spirit as it improves the well-being of mankind"
i remember this quite well... one of my favorite "rides" at "The Fair"... definitely this was the stuff of what dreams are made of... that why the world we live in today is so pale and hopeless... there's no NY Worlds Fairs anymore... to those who've missed it... to those of you who dismiss it... i really feel sorry for you... you'll never know what it was like... for a brief span of time, there was magic in the city... thx for the memories Larry... --Mike
I made a bad typo on this video; I meant to give it a 5 STAR rating. This film is a vivid reminder of my trip to the NY World's Fair as a young child. I went to GM as a 6 year old and this was one of the great thrills of my visits ( I also visited the Fair in 1965). Thank you for sharing this memory!
Just great!! Thanks so much for sharing! One of the best things for me was the two generations (the boy and the old man) witnessing this concept of the future. What would they both be thinking? Certainly both look amazed.
"...extracting the vast oil riches of the continental shelves..." Amazing to watch and see how absolutely ignorant we were of the dangers our own technology posed to us. No blame, no finger-pointing...we were all enthralled with the future and technology back then. But when he spoke that line...I felt my heart sink. A moment of silence, please, for the Gulf of Mexico...
Many here asking, "what happened to the future?" Oh, it arrived... but our snaky cynicism killed our glowing optimism. Brutal reality dictated the rest.
I saw this as a kid. My Dad worked for General Motors back then and we went to the NY Worlds Fair. Dad made sure we went to the GM pavilion to see Futurama. Seeing this film brings back memories. Thanks for sharing.
I was 5 then. We lived one subway stop away from this. I had to go through this ride every time I dragged Mom to the Fair, both of them on weekends. I probably went at least 2 dozen times. Likely more.
I was there will my family for a full day in summer of 1964 and again in 65. 16-17 yrs old at the time. Thanks for the memories! Will have to dig out the slides my dad made...
I went to this Exhibit at the World's Fair of 64 -65 and remenber it well. I lived a bike ride away from Parson and Northern Blvd. in Flushing, Queens, NY, USA.. I must laugh as my brother rode me to World's Fair on his bike's handle bars. I was seven years old .. times have changed. lol. .
I have a "Disney's Wonderful World of Knowledge" encyclopedia that contains photographs of the models shown in that video; remember being awed and inspired by them as a child, and they still do inspire me. It's quite great to be able to see some of those models in motion and from another visual perspective here.
I remember that exhibit. The line was super long but the “Futurama Ride” was worth it. And I also remember the commercial on the radio that began with, “When you see The Fair, see The Future first…” and seeing the ad on a billboard, “If you’ve only seen it once, you haven’t seen it all.”
I was about the same age in 1964. Blonde, blue eyes. I could have been that kid. I was that kid. I VIVIDLY remember those lunar rovers moving back and forth on this incredible display. I wished the ride had moved slower so I could examine all the details of the exhibit more closely. I vaguely remember the rest of the ride. Just that moon base portion is still imbedded in my memory. I thought it was the coolest thing!!!
Societal and environmental issues aside...I really do miss my childhood assumption, fueled by things like this, about how the structures and vehicles of the future would look. I am watching this on my hand-held, everything-doing computer video phone though, so thats cool. Just wish I lived in an outerspace bubble.
So cut down the rainforest. Build lots of freeways. Consume more. Turn the ocean and Antarctica into factories. Yes. That’s pretty true these days. Thanks General Motors.
I'm so glad our future ain't like that. All that future talk and they had no clue that computers will change everything. During that time, one computer takes up an entire room and it still can't do shit. I remember back in the early 90s where I was stuck in a car for hours on the way home as a kid, completely bored trying to entertain myself with a plastic car. I would sit there thinking how awesome it would be to watch tv on those long car rides. We came a long way
WOW! I remember this outstanding exhibit vividly! This is what I recall the most about the '64-'65 World's Fair! Thanks to whomever put this up! I just time-traveled to my youth! I'm still POed that we didn't get these "Jetson's-like" predictions in our lifetime. This country needs new vision, new direction and most of all, optimism.
This is a great example, how World Fair exhibitions in the past, excelled in telling total fairy tales, in order to raise sympathy for a brand, and sell more. This changed a lot. Most of the recent World Fairs, concentrate on the tremendous problems there are in the world right now, and the limited chances to solve them.
My mother was worlking at the Guinean pavillion and I was at the fair everyday, without mummy and daddy, and I am not the little boy. I still have a T-shirt with the Unisphere on, I was 10 !
Interesting is the contrast between the young boy and the older man, a scene which is shown several times in the video. The older man symbolizing the past and the young boy the future. Those that rode the ride as a kid are now looking back as that older man. How time flies.
I took this ride as a kid and remember being in awe at the time. At the time we couldn't see it for what was, like most of the fair offerings, nothing more than extravagant corporate propaganda.
Cool! I just found a brochure in the basement and had to google it. I found one identical brochure on eBay with an asking price of $99.96. Nice video that shows a, for me unknown, but interresting story.
I remember seeing this short on TV at the time and being the same age as the kid in the film I was impressed, but when it got to the "jungle highway paver" scene I had my first awareness that all this future is good is not all good. Hoof and mouth disease has has had a say on building the Pan American Highway thru the Darien gap. The first freaks dosed on LSD and went on a road trip to the fair crossing the US and also thought some of the Futurerama stuff was a joke or worse. 1939 was before my time but 1964-5 was not. Needless to say Futurerama is a great animated series.
Bell Telephone (or was it AT&T?) had a similar ride. The music that played was Aaron Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man. I went on it more frequently than the other rides because the lines were less long. Everybody wanted to go on the ride at the Ford exhibit because you got to ride in real Ford convertibles.
People wanted cars. Houses. Toys and shiny stuff. And more and more stuff. (and they still do). They cared little back then because the Earth still felt endless. But we have DOUBLED the population since I was born. That terrifies me.
@@mwayne9109 Hi. I just discovered your post. I agree, but in the 3 years since you noted the population having doubled, would you believe, the consensus now is that it is starting to shrink, pretty much everywhere. They're talking about it dropping to maybe 3 billion in 40 years (which could be a good thing). Of course, dominant paradigms shift, and the big population decline may be discredited in a few years. Three years ago, we certainly didn't see it becoming a thing.
@@brianarbenz1329Good points. I agree it would be a good thing-in the long run- and it may happen, one way or another. The last time I looked at the World Population Clock however, it looks the same to me as it has for years. (A net growth of between 100 and 150 thousand new mouths per day). That just seems so unsustainable. I wish I had an answer.
@Zamboro That's not to mention the undersea resorts being built in Fiji and the Phillipines, undersea mining in Papau New Guinea, undersea spa in the Maldives, undersea visitor observatories in Israel and China, the Atlantica civilian undersea colony in the works, Virgin Galactic's consumer space tourism, Space Adventures offering trips around the moon, the two inflatable Bigelow space habitats orbiting Earth (unmanned) as we speak, and the X-Prize 'Race to Inner Space".
Wow an America that looked forward with hope, whose driving force was to make the peoples lives better not just the rich richer. An America that felt it could do anything and that did not see everything in terms of who you could screw over or hate next.
I saw this in 1964, sitting on that moving seat, and thought that one day I'd go to the jungle to see the road, paved and with a yellow line down the middle. The rest is history.
It's been 60 years. I was in that pav maybe 13 times. After you saw it a few times I looked for something else. I was the go-to guy. Whenever we had company I was the leader that showed them everything. Everything but the Schaffer pav, I was too young. There was a small pav for women and makeup, I went in there and sat down in a booth and the mirror told me what kind of makeup was for me, THe women looked at me, but it was a big goof to me
For the jungle highway I've got a better idea: tunnel 40 metres below the forest and leave the plants and animals alone. Then, put mini-cameras in the forest and project real-time video on the walls of the tunnel in HDTV. Everybody wins. I did really like the cars guided with electronic precision, remarkably safe. That's the Google car, folks.
The problem is that under the rain forest is the aquifer that collects and recycles all the rainwater. That is what is really important in rain forests. Making a tunnel below the aquifers implies an infrastructure comparable to the Channel Tunnel for each road that crosses a rain forest. No company will assume such a cost, because it knows in advance that it would lose money.
I saw it too, as a young child. I was so small that I had to squat on the chair in order for my head to reach the headphones, which were fixed in one position. The message was that travel would liberate us. Then it showed beautiful gleaming cities. It didn't occur to me (or to most other visitors) that the ability to live anywhere would result in flight from the cities and urban decay. It didn't occur to GM what would happen to Detroit.
This GM film is great, but it doesn't really do justice to the actual Futurama ride, which was 15 minutes long ... the animated dioramas were huge, incredibly designed and detailed, and were basically creative works of art ... some of the buildings in the "city of tomorrow" diorama were almost 20 feet tall ... the "intermodal terminal" that is presented as part of GM's future city is an accepted urban design concept today and would provide safe, efficient access for pedestrians, autos, light rail, buses, containerized freight and VTOL commuter planes right into the center of the city.
I was only 8 years old at the time. But I remeber that even though the lines were long at the Fair, they moved rather fast. There was no extra admission to enter Futurama once we were in the Fairgrounds.
I think that part of the optimism was because of the very rapid developments in the space program. Things were progressing so fast that people were sure there would be cities on the moon, flying cars, etc, very soon. When you realize that we went from putting a chimp in a rocket for a quick sub-orbital flight (up and down fast like an elevator), to landing on the moon in less than ten years you can understand the optimism.
'' it is not of me, but,, i remember that day, often. like when i ride places out west and recall how modern hiways wud zoom across them.'' mom represented southdakota Lakota Native in her Buckskin dress and ware. '
“Vehicles, electronically paced, travel routes remarkably safe, swift, and efficient”. Unlike most of the things in the video, Smart Mobility will likely become a reality.
