Up Against the Wall of Science

A recent post by danbearnyc reminded me how fascinated I was in the mid-1960's by the New York World's Fair. From the perspective of small town North Carolina, all that world of tomorrow stuff resonated with me on a really primal level, reminding me of the tantalizing glimpses of the Palace of Green Porcelain in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. For years I had recurring dreams of wandering through endless museum-like pavilions filled with amazing displays of futuristic geegaws. I never actually got to the fair, but I used to own various guidebooks and the nifty official souvenir pictorial map.

Here's a site that has a bunch of New York World's Fair info and photos, plus a neat interactive version of the map.

Perhaps if I'd been a bit more precocious a few years earlier, I would have focused more on the apparently very very gay 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

( How gay was it...? )