Futurama

I know that Futurama was first created by GM for the 1939 World's Fair in New York. There was, after the war, several futuristic "buses" that GM drove around the country to show people visions of the motoring future. Wasn't the exhibit carried part of the Futurama? And wasn't this traveling show sometimes billed as Futurama?

Reply to
Don Stauffer
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If I've got this straight, which is a good question that you should ask yourself several times as you read this, the postwar ones (eight in all, irregularly spaced out 1949-1961) were called Motorama. A coffee-table book on the subject by David Temple came out last year. It was complemented through 1956 by the already existing since 1936 "Parade of Progress" (a caravan of spaceship-lookin' buses bringing news about the supersonic, atomic-powered future to your town).

Apparently the Motorama was highlighted at this year's Pebble Beach concours, e.g.,

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What strikes me is that (except for the Firebirds, which inevitably get the theme from Batman going through my head) most of them look from this perspective rather conventional -- just slight exaggerations of 50s design language. The Bauhaus-meets-Art-Deco bus that supported the exhibits, now, *that* was something.

They brought back the Futurama name for the 1964-5 World's Fair.

Some interesting materials from these things can be found on YouTube and at archive.org as well.

Cheers,

--Joe

Reply to
Ad absurdum per aspera

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