1964 New York World's Fair - American Industry in The Spotlight

American Industry in The Spotlight

At the 1939/1940 World's Fair, industrial exhibitors played a major role by hosting huge, elaborate exhibits. Many of them returned to the 1964/1965 fair with even more elaborate versions of the shows they had presented twenty-five years earlier. The most notable of these was General Motors Corporation whose Futurama, a show in which visitors seated in moving chairs glided past elaborately detailed miniature 3D model scenery showing what life might be like in the "near-future", proved to be the fair's most popular exhibit. Nearly 26 million people took the journey into the future during the fair's two-year run.

Other popular exhibits included that of the IBM Corporation, where a giant 500-seat grandstand was pushed by hydraulic rams high up into an ellipsoidal rooftop theater. There, a nine-screen film by Charles and Ray Eames showed the workings of computer logic. IBM also demonstrated handwriting recognition on a mainframe computer running a program to look up what happened on a particular date that a person wrote down—for many visitors, this was their first hands-on interaction with a computer.

The Bell System (now broken up into regional companies) hosted a 15-minute ride in moving armchairs depicting the history of communications in dioramas and film. Other Bell exhibits included the Picturephone (to go on sale at the time of the fair) as well as a demonstration of the computer modem. DuPont presented a musical review by composer Michael Brown called "The Wonderful World of Chemistry." At Parker Pen, a computer would make a match to an international penpal.

The Westinghouse Corporation planted a second time capsule next to the 1939 one; today both Westinghouse Time Capsules are marked by a monument southwest of the Unisphere which is to be opened in the year 6939. Some of its contents were a World's Fair Guidebook, an electric toothbrush, credit cards (relatively new at the time) and a 50-star United States flag.

The Sinclair Oil Corporation sponsored "Dinoland", featuring life-size replicas of nine different dinosaurs, including the corporation's signature Brontosaurus. After the fair closed, "Dinoland" spent a period of time as a traveling exhibit. After the traveling exhibit ended, the Stegosaurus model was donated to Dinosaur National Monument and is still on display to this day.

The fair was also a showplace for independent films. One of the most noted was a religious film titled Parable which showed at the Protestant Pavilion. It depicted humanity as a traveling circus and Christ as a clown. This marked the beginning of a new depiction of Jesus, and was the inspiration for the musical Godspell. Parable later went on to be honored at Cannes, as well as the Edinburgh Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. Another religious film was presented by the evangelist Billy Graham (who had sponsored his own pavillion) called Man in the 5th Dimension which was shot in the 70mm Todd-AO widescreen process for exclusive presentation in a specially designed theater equipped with audio equipment that enabled viewers to listen to the film in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. The 13 and one-half minute film Man's Search for Happiness was made for the Mormon Pavilion and was shown within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for decades.

The surprise hit of the fair was a non-commercial movie short presented by the SC Johnson Company (S.C. Johnson Wax) called To Be Alive! The film celebrated the joy of life found worldwide and in all cultures, and it would later win a special award from the New York Film Critics Circle and an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).

The Ford Motor Company introduced the Ford Mustang automobile to the public at its pavilion on April 17, 1964.