World Of Tomorrow - 1939 World's Fair Futurama

PS There is an IMDB entry, and the actual title is "To New Horizons" : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0304830/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Sadiq Mohamed

These old "World of Tomorrow" films are both fascinating and sad. The very narrow view fo the world and how it might progress is foremost in this. Particularly the very US orientated view of "Progress"! One interesting detail is that the Model Designer from General Motors who gets a credit right at the front is Norman Bel Geddes who I think was a Senior Designer for GM. He was also the father of Barbara Bel Geddes, the actress who played Ellie Ewing in "Dallas"!

Sadiq Mohamed

A documentary series of chapters documenting the evolution of Frandemonium!

Mike O'Dell

That was marvelous, thank you. Made me think two things in particular: 1) My immediate ancestors -- mom and dad, uncles and aunts, quite possibly viewed that film in 1939. I would not have known to ask them in 1960 what they thought of it. 2) Make a film today about the future of 2042 and think about viewing that film in 2103.

Mark Sundstrom

The 1939 Worlds Fair depiction of 1960 still hasn't occurred in spite of many engineering accomplishments of today. Still looking for utopia!

Well, ya' gotta remember that back then, the women were men too. Certainly were when WW2 rolled around and they "manned" the factories. Go Rosie!

BobC

Good thing we had all those MEN, eh? Interestingly, as is almost always the case, the emergence of computing was not foreseen at all, leading to many things that film could not imagine. Beyond that, virtually all of the technology described there, and more, is now or should be doable by 2030, only 70 years longer than portrayed there. The Interstate system was nearly complete and pretty new in 1960. What we have done with all that technology, especially in city scapes, is not so impressive. Given the speed of construction, there are places in China that kind of have the look they were going for. It's also interesting how narrator voices have changed over the decades.

Dan Swinehart

Wow! That's oldest "future progress prediction" movie I've ever seen. We accomplished some of what they said, but, thankfully, we didn't do a lot of it. It's far more depressing to see the future optimism that 2001 presented us in 1968. What did we get in 2001 for real? We got the 9/11 terrorist attacks. No sentient computer, like HAL, existed in 2001. Still doesn't exist in 2021! No spinning space station that regular citizens could travel to. Instead we have a cramped, gravity-free space station only the richest governments can send heavily trained people to. As a young child in the early 70s, 2001 was above my head as a whole, but I did noticed all the familiar restaurant, hotel, and Bell System logos on the walls as well as the IBM logo everywhere. It made it seem that this was really possible. Then Silent Running came out a few years later and the I saw the American Airlines Space Freighter model they created. In the cargo holds were dozens of unusual containers that had real company logos on them. Rockwell International, Coca Cola, Dow Chemical, Dura-Test, American Airlines, etc. My dad had to break the news to me that there is nothing like that out there and wouldn't be until I was an adult. After half a century of life, space has not been taken over by airlines and cargo ships are still not orbiting Saturn. It seemed like we could do anything back then. Now it seems bickering between ourselves has taken place over optimism. I still like the old optimistic movies of the lat 60s and early 70s. Reminds me of being a child thinking we could do anything.

Matt Wietlispach

This was made months after the Anschluss, the path to WW2 becoming very clear. The discovery of nuclear fission was happening right when this was made. Einstein & Szilard's letter to President Roosevelt was also in 1939. In the immortal words of physicist Dr. Niels Bohr: "Prediction is hard. Especially about the future."

BobC

It's strange to think that 20 years in their future is now 60 years in our past.

David Peaker