New York in 1964. Mom and Dad took me and my 3 sibs (Mom was pregnant with my last sister) along with my grandmother and aunt. We slept in a hotel and everything!! My most vivid memories are “It’s a Small World”, the Pieta, and walking around the fairgrounds one night after dark. Somewhere among my junk, I have a glow-in-the-dark name badge from the Ford Motors exhibit. I also remember something about dinosaurs - did they have animatronics then?
I think the last day we were in NYC, we went to Macy’s and my sister and I got matching dresses.
I went to the 1964 NY World’s Fair several times, including at least once on my own. I remember various pavilions, Ford, GM, the Pieta.
The GE Carousel of Progress was impressive because the auditorium moved around the stage. It was set up again at Disney World, but the stage revolved instead. Less impressive.
I was also at Expo '67. We went early on and there were no lines the first day. The next day, the crowds arrived and it took forever to wait to get into the popular exhibits. Lines were so common, they me and my brothers made our own line in the German pavilion to touch the roof and people lined up behind us.
I don’t know if you could call them animatronic but they moved. We have the same thing for two of the dinos on our Dinosaur Mountain in the Arizona Museum of Natural History. It was one of four dioramas Disney made for the fair, was indeed for the Ford pavilion, and after the fair closed all four were brought to Disneyland. Along with a Grand Canyon diorama, the Primeval World diorama was installed along the railroad, shortly before the Main Street station and both are still there today.
The other three were Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln (Illinois), Carousel of Progress (General Electric), and It’s a Small World (Pepsi Cola).
Further to my post above, Expo 67 was the first and only world’s fair I ever attended, but it was very memorable, particularly because of all the time I spent there. It was a terrific way to celebrate Canada’s 100th birthday. It was also a time of patriotic fervour, both nationally and more locally – as exemplified by the 1967 ode to the province of Ontario, A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow. Coincidentally, the next year was the year I made the Big Move – the transition from living at home to independence, and moved to attend university in Ontario. It was a very memorable time for me in many different ways.
On a totally different topic, but on the subject of world fairs, I highly recommend the book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, one of Erik Larson’s finest works of historical non-fiction, depicting the story of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and a series of gruesome murders that occurred in parallel with it.
I went- although I have no memory of it since I was born in 1963. When I was older, I did visit some of the attractions that remained after the fair, like the NYC panorama and the roller rink that was in the NYS Pavilion.
The NY Worlds Fair was only a bus ride and one subway stop from my house, so I went there often when I was 14, with my parents, with a school trip, and even just with my friends. (That wouldn’t be allowed today.) I went ten times at least, and saw everything free.
My friend and I did a raffle for UNICEF, and took the winnings to “It’s a Small World,” which was Pepsi but also UNICEF, and turned it in to a confused receptionist.
Besides the stuff already mentioned, we went to the IBM people wall, rode in a new Mustang convertible at Ford, saw a chemistry demo at DuPont, and toured a dinosaur park at Sinclair Oil, which used a dinosaur as its logo.
And just after the fair closed my first Boy Scout camping trip was at the fairgrounds, with an assembly at the Unisphere. I went to the model of New York at the NYC pavillion during the fair and went back since. It’s featured in the series on Fran Leibowitz on Netflix done my Martin Scorcese.
My high school marching band performed at the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair. I accidentally broke part of the Mexican pavilion. Tell no one. (Hey! The railing looked like it was stone, OK? How was I to know it was thin fiberglass???)
The IBM exhibit at the Seattle Worlds Fair featured a voice controlled adding machine:
Called ‘Shoebox’ it was the invention of William Dersch shown above in a promo photo for the fair. Dersch had left IBM long before the Fair, but, as the inventor, was honored during the opening ceremonies. The system shown was built by a team of three at ASDD in San Jose. I was a member of that team. Each of us got a trip to the fair and demonstrated the system at least once during the visit.
When I demonstrated it, I was heckled by two engineers from Litton Industries. They pointed out that you can push the keys lots faster than you can talk. True, but I argued that this is the way of the future.
That turned out to be true, but nothing in Shoebox survives in modern voice recognition. Bill Dersch did not have a microprocessor or integrated circuits. He used germanium transistors and diodes, aluminum electrolytics and relays. Measurements were latched in relays and the vocabulary was wired through the relay contacts. It was really a product of genius (and patience).
2 buddies and I made plans to attend Expo 74 in Spokane. We played in a high school football game the Friday night before we planned to leave, Steve broke bones in 2 fingers that night and had to have surgery the next day. He was out. Rich and I piled into my 63 Comet convertible and off we went. As we approached the Vantage bridge over the Columbia River, the oil light came on in my car. I stopped and added a quart of oil. We only made it a few miles down I-90 when my car squealed to a halt. Called home and my step father and a friend of his came to rescue us. They towed us from Vantage back to Tacoma with a cheap nylon rope. This was about 170 miles and at about 35 mph on an interstate freeway. We had left at 7 that morning and got back home at 9 that night. Found out later a $2 oil pump shaft had wore out but because I kept driving, I burned up the engine in my car.
Another Seattle-area resident who went to Expo 86 many times. I bought earrings at the South Korea pavillion and took a lot of pictures of the Swiss pavillion.
I still have the earrings, and I’m living in Switzerland.
I have a 1939 New York World’s Fair bracelet (Sphere & Trylon, Filigree) from my grandmother. I don’t think she went herself, I believe it was a gift from her older brother who did go.
There was a pub in the British Pavilion. And you may have seen the actual Irish Rovers; according to Wikipedia they played at the Fair.
All alone at the '64 World’s Fair
Eighty dolls yelling “small world after all”
Who was at the DuPont Pavilion?
Why was the bench still warm, who had been there?
I was at Disney World last month, and went on the Carousel of Progress. The audience rotated around the stages. The last stage has been revised in the last few years.
1982 Knoxville Worlds fair. I don’t remember a lot of the exhibits but do particularly remember the US exhibit being pretty popular. (I actually got in to see it) The China exhibit had a 4 hour line so I never saw it. I later found out that some from our group walked in the exit to get in without having to wait. I
We left from the southern part of Virginia and the trip took about 6 hours.
I also remember that we stayed near Pigeon Forge in a motel - this was a school band trip.
I singularly remember attending a dinner theater at Sweet Fanny Adams in Pigeon Forge that I remember as being hilarious to me for some reason. I recently looked them up again and found that they permanently closed due to Covid which is sad.
I know that this was supposed to be super memorable but honestly I spent an embarrassing amount of time in the arcade. Lol.
I don’t remember all the details of IBM’s participation at Expo 67, but I do recall that they had a full-scale computer room on display featuring an operational System/360. Apparently the System/360 came in a variety of colours, not just the traditional IBM blue, and this one had bright red cabinets. I was envious of the IBM employees who had the privilege to be milling around in there with that magnificent machine. I remember it being a big glass-walled room but I don’t remember if it was in IBM’s own pavilion or somewhere else.
Another thing I distinctly remember was a big circa-early-40s yellow taxi on display in the movies section of the US pavilion. It was exactly the sort of thing strongly reminiscent of a 1940s classic movie, perhaps even one with Bogie and Bacall, and was definitely there for that reason, but I have never been able to find out what movie it was from. There must have been some information with the exhibit, but if I ever knew it, I’ve long since forgotten.
Seattle World’s Fair, 1962. I was nine, and went with my aunt and uncle. We ate at the restaurant at the top of the Space Needle, and of course rode the Monorail. Most of my memories were pretty fuzzy, but I do recall an exhibit that had one million silver dollars stacked up in piles. My nine-year-old brain was completely mesmerized.
Not World’s Fair related, but that reminds me of a story told to me by a coworker who used to work in the “computer room” when our IT (or DP, as it was) department was in Long Beach. He said he hated it, because it had big glass windows on the street, which meant they had to wear dress shirts and ties. Later, after some anti-technology vandalism (in other places), they realized having your computer resources on display behind glass wasn’t too smart.
I went to the ’64 world’s fair, but I was only 4, so a don’t remember too much (but, I do remember getting a green Sinclair dinosaur molded in front of me). I’ve also been to Expo ’67 and Expo ’86 (I think I still have a T-shirt from that one).
My family went to the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. I was six at the time, so I only have a few hazy things I remember:
We stayed in a campground somewhere near the fair. While he was driving us back to the camp in the dark, my father accidentally drove into a ditch. I had been asleep in the back seat, dreaming that I was on those sky cars, and that the cable had broken and I fell. I awoke to find that the jolt I felt was actually our car going into a ditch.
At the fair, we gazed up at the space needle and the sky cars and the monorail, but didn’t go on any of them. Money was an issue back then.
After visiting the fair, we then went over to the Olympic Peninsula to camp, where I tasted my first Dungeness crab. I have been addicted to them ever since.
