Where is the best place to upload historical found photos like this? I occasionally buy and scan old slides from estate sales and would like to use a site that makes them accessible and searchable. Is there anything better than Flickr?
I've thought about my local University's archive, but I'd like something a bit more DIY and accessible rather than donating images to some bureaucracy and the images never seeing the light of day.
Before YouTube saw fit to boot Jeff Quitney off for no (apparently) valid reason, he posted some great content from the period. A search for "Jeff Quitney 1939 world's fair site:vimeo.com" will bring up at least some of the footage.
I recently visited the Parthenon in Nashville and after seeing photos of the Centennial Expedition, I always wondered what it would have been like wandering around when it was going on. It really put into perspective how alien other cultures would have been seen by the locals at the time, and I feel the '39 World's Fair captures the same feeling
The 1939 World's Fair vision of the future, or at least the GM version, "Futurerama", was mostly achieved by the 1960s.[1] (Skip ahead to 7:45).
The 1964 World's Fair had a similar GM exhibit, but almost none of it happened. Undersea cities. Large space stations. Moon colonies. Moving sidewalks.[2] No.
That piques my interest. I was under the impression that in 2010, world fairs were kind of obsolete events, series of advertisement for products that are not especially innovative.
Were there any interesting visions of the future at this fair?
Went to Shanghai Expo 2010. Honestly it's a rather uninspiring event.
Exhibitions were primarily organised by countries, which tend to be more particular about some specific culture than visionary about the future.
The theme was "Better city, better life" (subtly different than the Chinese version, which was "Cities make life better"). Technologies demonstrated are far from cutting edge, something like internet-connected air conditioners and large touch-screens.
I think either the Danes or the Dutch put some bikes in their exhibition, which you can ride and feel what it's like to ride in their cities, which is rather fun (a precursor to the current VR hype perhaps?).
Infrastructure seems to be your main point to say one place is more modern than the other.
I would partially agree but it's more nuanced than that.
The high speed trains in China are impressive projects but could also be used as form of control over people who live outside the cities.
Also going cashless is not necessarily a good thing. There is a loss of anonymity in having every transaction be digitally handled. Also, another form of control.
My apologies for my dystopian view. But not all modern advances are necessarily good.
I've been on them a few years ago, as a visitor, and I suspect that's referring to the security checkpoints that you have to pass through. It's not like taking a bus or other public transit; the experience is closer to taking a plane across an international border.
>- a country wide network of high speed railroads in a country larger than the US
That's more of a factor of population density and distribution than anything else. There's few places in the US where high speed rail makes sense compared to airplanes.
China is building high speed rail even where it doesn't "make sense", as part of a national policy to tie the country together. Here's a current map.[1] That's comparable to having high speed rail to every major city east of the Mississippi, plus a line out to the West Coast.
> Flanked by Boy Scouts, President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened New York’s $160,000,000 World’s Fair with an address in which he said America has “hitched her wagon to a star of good will”, on April 30, 1939. He emphasized the United States’ desire for placid living among the countries of the world and expressed hope that the future would see a breakdown of “many barriers of intercourse” among European nations.
That model is actually made by Ford so it’s kind of car centric. However, it is also also more 3D than that picture makes it look like. It has plenty of raised walkways to get around and roads below them. This picture is just absolutely dominated by that freeway.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 90.3 ms ] threadMost of the original sources are public and private archives
RADAR, the modern airplane, atomic energy, rocketry ... so much was accomplished.
The 1964 World's Fair had a similar GM exhibit, but almost none of it happened. Undersea cities. Large space stations. Moon colonies. Moving sidewalks.[2] No.
Shanghai 2010 was the biggest world's fair. [3]
[1] https://archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-5aK0H05jk [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX_Wsh3MUpk
That piques my interest. I was under the impression that in 2010, world fairs were kind of obsolete events, series of advertisement for products that are not especially innovative.
Were there any interesting visions of the future at this fair?
Exhibitions were primarily organised by countries, which tend to be more particular about some specific culture than visionary about the future.
The theme was "Better city, better life" (subtly different than the Chinese version, which was "Cities make life better"). Technologies demonstrated are far from cutting edge, something like internet-connected air conditioners and large touch-screens.
I think either the Danes or the Dutch put some bikes in their exhibition, which you can ride and feel what it's like to ride in their cities, which is rather fun (a precursor to the current VR hype perhaps?).
- a country wide network of high speed railroads in a country larger than the US
- many more EVs manufactured and in use
- worlds largest manufacturer and consumer of solar power
- essentially cashless socity. Smartphone usuable for every transaction
China: 9.32 million km^2 of land
US: 9.14 million km^2 of land
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
I would partially agree but it's more nuanced than that.
The high speed trains in China are impressive projects but could also be used as form of control over people who live outside the cities.
Also going cashless is not necessarily a good thing. There is a loss of anonymity in having every transaction be digitally handled. Also, another form of control.
My apologies for my dystopian view. But not all modern advances are necessarily good.
Explain?
That's more of a factor of population density and distribution than anything else. There's few places in the US where high speed rail makes sense compared to airplanes.
[1] https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/train/high-speed...
Oh yeah, we all know why.
That stands out as one of the things that did reach a limited amount of use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway
What a perfect name
* https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tMmp66CqNKY/WYKgglZbyZI/AAAAAAAAN...
Here is a slightly different angle: https://placesjournal.org/article/indexing-the-world-of-tomo...
still not clear to me how one gets from one building to another without a car.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_(New_York_World%27s...
Also my bad it was GM not Ford.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_i...
That actually looks quite safe. Pedestrians don't have to look out for cars, and vice-versa.