The Way of the Future as They Once Thought of it...

The 1939 World's Fair was filled with many wondrous works of the technological imagination.  On lookers were often encased in class bubbles, or glass walkways to over look "advances" in science.  Model cities were built with the idea that they would soon be constructed by "levels", including the buildings, depending on the purpose that they served.  This included skyscraping walk way; both of these are shown in the first pictures of 1939's 'World of Tomorrow' Shaped our Today (Snyder, John. "1939′s ‘World of Tomorrow’ Shaped Our Today." Wired.com.), as well as in the first chapter of The Wonderful Future That Never Was.  General Motors' Futurama just sounds like a science fictional wonderland with robots and flying cars.  So much progress had been made over the century prior, and America was moving at such a rapid rate, one could only fathom the types of technologies that would be available soon.  To be modern fueled the formation of the mass consumer culture in America.  Making a life at home on the farm was slowly becoming obsolete to many people as the more technology that came to be with a wider variety of professions that were offered to people in the cities.  And progress was not just related to space, plastic and glass seemed exciting and new as well.  Mass production was becoming more and more important, and more common with the use of synthetic materials.  It seemed to be that anything could have been made out this stuff!   Homes could be constructed in a day and filled with mass produced furniture.  Electricity, as pointed out in chapter 2 of he Wonderful Future That Never Was, was an invention that was transforming homes across America.  Appliances would be able to wash clothes and keep food cool.  Artificial lighting and radios were becoming a staple as well.  These discoveries were promising for the future and all anyone had to do was dream it, and that would be the future of technology.  With the way things were going, who could say no to a future where cars flew, or robots trimmed your hair, styled your make up or whatever else might make life a tad bit better.  The video "All's Fair at the Fair" is a peek into how people of the 1930's were imagining possibilities of the future.  Only a handful of actual people were present throughout the video, and the rest was dominated by robots that had personalities of their own.  There was no need to hire someone to pay the piano, when you could make from patrons sliding a nickle or so into a robot to do the job.  Technological innovations would hopefully become cheaper and more widely accessible by 2000 A.D. 

As for the broadcast that made history on Halloween 1938, The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles, it was a piece of science fiction presented as fact.  The actors did announce, I believe twice, that it was an entertainment piece derived from the 1898 H.G.  Wells novel.  However, to the average person, family, or gathering that naturally tuned into the radio in those days, you might not have tuned in at the right time to catch this disclaimer.  The play sounded exactly as a normal radio news broadcast in the day, so an unknowing listener would take it just as serious a real one.  Also, Welles uses a great deal of scientific terms in the broadcast, and speaks with a few "professors" from well known and respected universities, such as the Natural Science Museum Astronomical Division's "Dr. Grey", who supposedly records an earth quake, or Mr. Richard Pierson, an astronomer reporting from the Princeton Observatory.  They discuss the distance of Mars from earth (40,000,000 miles), a description of the planet, and what has been observed via the telescopes there, including "explosions". Taking the same individuals (the commentator Carl Phillips, and Mr Pierson) out to the sight of the "invasion" of the Martians to speak with other individuals and discuss further scientific occurrences, such as heat rays, make the radio broadcast that much more believable.  They just sound so professional that in today's world, I would be jumping on the computer or turning on the television to confirm truth in the matter.  The fact is, though, that people did not have other means of communication in the day and I could easily see how this whole broadcast could have fooled them and caused panic.  The broadcast uses real locations, as well as what sounded like credible professors using prominent school names, and used scientific terms to describe what was going on.  Anyone could easily believe this is fact.  In my opinion, the broadcast really shows the generation's fascination with science fiction at the time and what people thought could be possible at the time.