1964 New York World's Fair

The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair was the second World's Fair to be held at Flushing Meadows Park in the Borough of Queens, New York in the twentieth century. It opened on April 22, 1964 and ran for two six-month seasons concluding on October 17, 1965.

American industry takes 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 whose Futurama, a show in which visitors seated in three-abreast moving armchairs glided past detailed dioramas showing what life might be like in the "near-future," proved to be the Fair's most popular exhibit. Nearly twenty-six million people took the journey into the future during the Fair's two-year run.

Related Topics:
1939 - 1940 - 1964 - 1965 - General Motors - Futurama

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Other popular exhibits included that of the IBM Corporation where a giant five hundred-seat grandstand was pushed by hydraulic rams high up into an ovoid-shaped rooftop theater. There, a nine-screen film showed the workings of computer logic. The Bell System hosted a fifteen-minute ride in moving armchairs depicting the history of communications in dioramas and film. 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 a world-wide pen-pal.

Related Topics:
IBM - Bell System - DuPont - Michael Brown

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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. The movie went on to win an Academy Award in 1966.

Related Topics:
SC Johnson - Academy Award - 1966

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The Fair is remembered as the vehicle Walt Disney used to design and perfect the system of "audio-animatronics," in which a combination of sound and computers control the movement of life-like robots to act out scenes. Disney Studios was responsible for the creation of four shows at the Fair. In the

Related Topics:
Walt Disney - Disney Studios - "it's a small world" - Pepsi-Cola - General Electric - Carousel of Progress - Ford Motor Company - Illinois - Abraham Lincoln - Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln - Disneyland

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