Norman Bel Geddes' "Futurama" (1939)
One of the most impressive attractions at the 1939 World's Fair in New York was General Motors 35,000-square-foot diorama, depicting America in 1960 as a place reshaped in wonderful ways by the automobile. "Speed is the cry of our era," "Futurama" designer Bel Geddes explained, and he envisioned highways with curved sides that allowed cars in the outer lanes to travel safely at 100 miles per hour. In the world of the future, everything was streamlined, from the curved steel-and-glass skyscrapers in the cities to the teardrop shape of the vehicles that whizzed down the streets on automated radio control, while pedestrians strolled above them on second-story-level sidewalks. But perhaps the most fantastic part of GM's Futurama was the city's floating, circular airport, designed to rotate in relation to the wind. Safe to say, the real America of 1960 bore little resemblance to the imagined one.
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