This is an original Retrofuture article from 1999. What GM wouldn’t give for some good publicity today.
These days the name “Futurama” is associated with a cartoon series created by Matt (“The Simpsons”) Groening. Few realize its name is borrowed from a wildly-popular ride at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.
That Futurama–the original Futurama–was an unforgettable trip into the brave new world of 1960. Yes, fabulous 1960…who can forget the thrill of exiting off a highway at 50 miles per hour?
Back in 1939, hundreds of thousands were mesmerized by Futurama’s elaborate vision. What drew them in? Gleaming skyscrapers, massive superhighways and promises of greater mobility.
Spectators were exhilarated by the imaginary presentation staged by General Motors. Gliding along in comfortable easy chairs wired for sound, they looked down on the spectacular 35,000 square-foot diorama and learned how giant highway intersections would permit those rapid right and left turns. “Strange? Fantastic? Unbelievable?” asked the narrator, “Remember, this is the world of 1960!”
The calming tones of the narrator were filled with assurance. Doubt was not option in Futurama. “The World of Tomorrow” promised only better days ahead. Futurama followed this script to perfection. Visitors were promised that “abundant sunshine, fresh air, fine green parkways” would blend together seamlessly with dazzling skyscrapers and seven-lane highways. Thanks to the monumental scale of the presentation, even the most-outlandish claim seemed believable.
At the end of the ride, when the awestruck visitors were deposited in a GM showroom and left to contemplate the meaning of it all, they were handed a souvenir button that read: “I have seen the future.” Few disagreed.
I wasn’t there (although, ironically enough, I was born in 1960). My father, who was there, remembers the trip through Futurama as one of the highlights of his childhood.
The real 1960, of course, looked almost nothing like the car-based utopia of Futurama. But that hardly mattered–twenty years later, the ride was already sealed in the public’s imagination. “A modern masterpiece of illusion” writes Joseph P. Corn who authored “Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Vision of the American Future,” adding “no futuristic film or exhibit (has) ever been so convincing.”
Futurama was also a spectacularly-effective piece of propaganda for GM. In staging the event, GM hoped fairgoers (read: potential car buyers) would be lured into an idealized fantasy world–not the world of 1939 with its traffic accidents and stop-and-go congestion but a world free of inconvenience and hassles.
“Speed is the cry of our era,” declared the ride’s designer Norman Bel Geddes. And Futurama reflected this belief. Everything about Futurama was streamlined–the curved towers of steel and glass, the futuristic teardrop-shaped automobiles, even the “Highways and Horizons” pavilion that housed the ride.
Bel Geddes’ brilliantly-executed vision struck a popular chord with audiences. With World War II rumbling ominously in the distance, most Americans were willing to suspend disbelief and buy into exhibit’s rosy outlook.
“All eyes to the future,” announced the narrator of Futurama. Colossal highways raced by monumental cityscapes, lush green farmlands rolled through the open countryside. Bel Geddes based his seductive vision on the ideas of architect Le Corbusier and other European modernists from the late 1930s.
Many concepts were amusingly off the mark: floating airports which adjusted in water to shift to the changing wind conditions; highways with curved sides which allowed vehicles to travel at different speeds (four lanes at 50 m.p.h, two lanes at 75 m.p.h, and two lanes at 100 m.p.h.).
In retrospect a few errors in judgment seem so obvious (no mention being made of pollution or the consequences of unchecked progress) but over the years, Futurama’s legend continues to grow. Its reputation, in no small measure, is based on the considerable theatrical flair Bel Geddes brought to the project. Bel Geddes sincerely believed that through cooperative efforts and good planning people could lead better lives.
In 1964, General Motors created an updated Futurama for the follow-up New York World’s Fair. But this time riders were less impressed. They had already seen the future of 1960 and it hadn’t looked anything like the past.
Tags: 1939 World's Fair, Futurama
Yeah, well the ’64 futurama had a lot of BS in it too. Like all the weather satellites transmitting pictures… to a world weather station at the north pole.
Why the north pole? There’s nothing up there. They could beam their signals to anywhere on earth. Perhaps it was so a single antenna could always see the geosynchronous satellite, but it would be touching the horizon, and it would be far cheaper to have receiving stations spaced globally.
GOD!
And don’t EVEN get me started on 50-lane highways through the center of a city, or cities deep in the ocean for no reason.
Oh, and the “kitchen of tomorrow” had cabinets that rose up out of the floor. So if you get a glass of water, you had to wait 15 seconds for the cabinet to rise up. You couldn’t even put anything else oin top of that space 9or it would block the cabinet. Not to mention power failures, the cost of electricity to run the motors, and the certainty of motor failure within 10 years.’
WTF were these people thinking?
And why didn;t I notice the gross impracticalities when I was an amazed, wide-eyed little girl?
– faye kane idiot savant