How did the “world of tomorrow” as the 1939 New York Wold’s Fair called itself, look to those who were trying to envisage it? You could say the previsions of 1939 were weakened by a depression just before and shadowed by a war just ahead. But then, if some miraculous seer could have overcome these limitations, they would hardly have been acclaimed. If they had been able to show the real 1939 or the real 1960 or 2000, nobody would have believed them…
What did the Americans of 1939 have of the future of their nation? They expected little further economic expansion, but in fact the GNP and national income were to become seven times greater over the next quarter century. They also expected an end to national population growth, and more specifically a long gradual decline. The idea of a 330 million America was totally unfathomable; no one saw the baby Boom coming.
An insight into the horizons of the 1939 American may perhaps be acquired by looking at his view of the future of a favorite American artifact, then as now, the automobile. At a meeting of the World Automotive Engineering Congress that spring in New York, Edwin L. Allen, predicted that the American car of the future would be built in the shape of a teardrop, with the point in the rear. “In the not too distant future,” Allen said, “we will walk up to uor car, push a button, and the door will open. We will have the impression of entering a commodious room. It will not be necessary to crawl over stationary seats and trip over pumps and tunnels in the floor. The seats will be light , movable chairs and the floor will be flat and wide. A portion of the roof will be made of a curved translucent material which will admit the health-giving rays of the sun and at the same time remove glare.”
Does it all sound rather naive? The irrational idea of the “commodious room”? Could anyone be expected to know that by the mid 1950′s the car manufacturers would be making psychological studies of the symbolic meaning of cars to their owners, and that designers would be aiming to produce the right image in terms of sex and status instead of comfort and safety? Seldom, perhaps, in its long history, has crystal gazing been shown so graphically to be an undertaking in which knowledge and logic are powerless. ( to be continued)…