Welcome to Stuff you should know.
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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just us today. Jerry's out on vacation. I mean, she's at a conference, and this is the stuff you should know.
That's right, This was your idea, and something about it just smacks of kind of classic stuff you should know where we talk about a bygone era in a way.
And so yeah, we're talking about world's fairs today. Depending on where you are in the world, you might call them international expositions, universal expositions, you might just call them expose if you're pressed for time. Sure, And I thought, maybe, Chuck, we would just do this entire episode in gibberish that only you and I can understand.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
This is the one. We're finally gonna do.
It, all right, let's do it.
On second thought, let's not do it. Let's not do it all right. So well, let's set the stage then in plain English. It's hard to kind of understand now, because we live in a world, and generally grew up in a world that if we didn't have internet when we were kids, we still had television, cable television, no less. Before that, generations had radio and then yes, now today we can basically go anywhere see anything, even stuff you don't want to see, because everyone generally has access to
the internet, right. Yeah, before all of this, like being exposed to new ideas, new things, seeing what the latest cutting edge stuff was, that was not a common thing for the average person, Like you just did not see that kind of stuff, and that was generally the role that World's fairs played.
Yeah, it was that, And like every time I was reading about the different ones from the different nations, it was very much like, hey, look at how great we're doing, right, you know, Like I mean obviously trying to supur commerce and trade and stuff like that, but a lot of it was sort of showing off.
It was showing off. It was showing off, like all the technological prowess and all the future ideas that are coming down the pike that each country was working on. There was lots of corporate exhibits eventually, and it sounds to me like a cool place to have been. Yeah, Like if I had a big list to pick from of stuff I could go time travel too, I would probably go to a couple of these.
Oh all right, so Woodstock, the inauguration of Jimmy Carter and the World's Fair.
That's right. Well, let's get into the history of this, shall we.
Yeah, because they didn't start as World's fares. If you want to track the prehistory, you got to go to the National Affairs. Sure, England was holding these in the seventeen hundreds, barely. I think seventeen fifty four was the first real one when the what would later be the Royal Society for Arts, but before they got Royal, I
guess they were just the Society for Arts. They had different shows and it was sort of like, I mean, this was the seventeen hundred, so it was the technology of the time was like, hey, look at this cool new loom, or look at this new cool way we can press cider.
Yes, and there was this kind of this new idea called industrial arts, which was essentially designing and inventing new technology. And yeah, it was old timey, but for the time it was pretty cutting edge. And this is what laid the kind of the foundation for the idea of what a World's Fair is all about, which is, look at
all the technological progress we're making. It I saw that it was essentially inextricably tied together with the industrial Revolution, that that's really what kind of gave them the oomph needed, you.
Know, steampowered oomph.
Yeah, that's right.
I guess not yet, but steam is coming. Don't worry. France would get involved. They saw what England was doing where they're like, well, we can't let them best us. So they started holding theirs also in the late eighteenth century, and both of them again were like marketing themselves sort of abroad but also to their own people, like hey, look at how great we're doing the rest of France.
Yeah, you can feel good about being French. Yeah, in France becomes like basically the apex of world's fairs eventually or international expositions. But England kind of took the crown back first. And Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who was of German ancestry or what we now call Germany and who we have to thank for Christmas. So thank you
Prince Albert. Oh yeah, he hosted the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in eighteen fifty one, and this was what basically everyone who knows about world's Fairs knows anything about Worlds Fairs, says this was the first World's Fair.
Yeah, no, one calls it the Great Exhibition of the Works of the industry of all nations, right except for us because we're being technical. Because everyone calls it the Crystal Palace exhibition because that's where they built the Crystal Palace. It was in Hyde Park from May to October eighteen
fifty one. And they wanted a real you know, and you'll see this as a trend, like they really wanted to knock people's socks off when they arrive and when you arrived at this you know, kind of glorified greenhouse. And in fact it was built by a greenhouse builder named Joseph Paxton. But it was eighteen acres of glass and iron and steel and it was it created eight miles of display space, and it was like super impressive.
Yeah, it was a real ring and ding ding greenhouse. I mean, an eighteen acre greenhouse is not easy to make, right, So yes, it knocked everyone's socks off for sure. You said there's eight miles worth of display space inside. So it was also capable of holding fourteen thousand exhibits. Yeah, man, about half of them were from Britain, and one of the reasons that Prince Albert wanted to do this is because he wanted to drum up interest in Europe in particular for imports from Britain.
Yeah.
Yeah, he was like, hey, we got a bunch of good stuff. Once you come over and see it, and then you can place your orders on your way out the door.
I wonder if they could you really place orders? I'll bet you d you think so.
Yeah. So there was about five hundred and sixty exhibits from the US, and one of them was the cult repeating pistol, and I guarantee you could have been like, I want to order some of those, give me some right now so I can shoot in the air in the Crystal Palace.
I bet you could have left there with a cult repeating pistol if you had enough money.
Probably yeah.
Yeah. But I promised steam, and that is that first one is where the steam engine was officially debuted, as well as the automated cotton mule. Sure for spinning France. You know, I think you said US had five sixty. France had seventeen hundred and sixty exhibits. In addition to the cult repeating pistol. Did you mention chewing tobacco? I did not, And that's where we debuted as a nation. Hey, look what we've come up with, chewing tobacco, which I imagine we stole from indigenous peoples here.
Yes, but we really kind of americanized that the person running that booth had to dance back and forth, pumping its fist like a prospector the whole.
Time, right, and dance on maybe artificial legs, because artificial legs were debuted by the United States there.
That's right. We really just had one exhibit and they were everything compressed together.
Guy dancing on artificial egg shooting his pistol in the air to in tobaccy.
Yep, that's exactly right. So yeah, this is obviously a huge hit. It actually made money for the organizers, which was not the case for all the world's fairs to come. But because of that a lot of people around the world were like, hey, I want to get in on this, and Paris said we're first. There was one in Dublin, there was one in Cork, there was one in Munich, there was one in New York. But really everything kind of moved over to Paris when they said we're over here.
Yeah, for sure. I mean the other ones were legit World's Fairs. I think the one in New York in eighteen fifty three through I think November eighteen fifty four. That was a long one July to November. Yeah, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations. In that case, they did okay, but they were They clearly copied the Crystal Palace. They built their own there in Bryant Park, but they lost money. I think the first US one to make any kind of hey was the one in Philly in eighteen seventy six.
Right, Yeah, that was a centennial exhibition where the typewriter was invented Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone. There was also the largest steam engine ever. Yeah, apparently still holds the record. It was a seven hundred tons steam engine
called the Corliss Engine. It took sixty five railroad cars to deliver it to the exhibition in Philadelphia, and when they turned it on, all of the machines at the World's Fair came to life because they were all being powered by the steam engine in the center of the whole place.
That's a pretty fun little knock your socks off moment.
It is pretty cool.
I think, like everyone's standing around. Well, I guess it was still it wasn't powering lights at the time, was it. No, not yet, Okay, because we're yeah, that happens, it's coming, everybody coming.
Yeah, But this whole thing it really I mean, it attracted ten million people and it was a it was a big one. So I guess I got ahead of myself. Paris hadn't come. Yeah, I'm just really excited about Paris taking over for some reason.
Yeah, I mean they took over in a big way. They hosted eight of them between eighteen fifty five and nineteen thirty seven, and a lot of theirs like most other nations when they hosted, the government kind of really hosted. In America, it was a lot of like corporate entities from the beginning along with the government, but Paris really took it to a political sort of apex by like Napoleon really was showing off in the first and second ones, like look how great I am, and look at all
the great things I've done. The third one, I think in eighteen seventy eight, was like, hey, you know, we're doing fine. We've recovered from the Franco Prussian War and all this internal violence of the Paris Commune, and like we're still doing great, look at us.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that was a big part of those European ones. Like you said, the Paris ones also more charmingly, had fountains, Like almost all of them had a really cool fountain, and a lot of those fountains are left over. There's one from eighteen eighty nine called the Fountain of Progress, and it is the first water feature to have electric lights inside that shined up from underwater, which to me is still quite impressive.
You had, do you think when they debuted it, they were like, and we're gonna have Jacques stand in the fountain while we turned it on. We're pretty sure it's gonna work, right.
No one likes shock anyway, so don't worry.
Yeah, it all worked out for shock though. Now. But I'm still like when I see a swimming pool light, I know it's housed in a thing, but I don't know. It all just vaguely makes me nervous.
It does, for sure, I get that. But the ones in the fountains, they never make me nervous. They just look so cool to me.
Yeah, because you're not in the fountain.
No, no, so it doesn't matter if it's like buzzing with electricity.
Have you ever been to Rome, Italy?
Have It's one of my favorite towns.
Seen that Trevy Fountain? I do?
Is that the one with all the yes? I have?
Yeah? You didn't go to Rom and not see the Trivyountain? Right?
Yeah? It was pretty amazing. Yeah.
I think that has lights in it.
I'm sure it does.
Or at least around it. The thing was lit up. I was there at night and it wasn't dark.
I was there during the day, so I couldn't tell you.
Okay, I gotcha.
So.
One of the other things that happened at the eighteen eighty nine Exposition Universal was that the Eiffel Tower was debuted, and we talked about this in depth. We did a twenty twenty episode on the Eiffel Tower.
That's right, but just a couple of points as a refresher. It was a contest about one hundred entrants and Gustav Eiffel won it along with his colleagues, and they proposed at the time what was going to be the It was I think the tallest building in the world at about one thousand feet and people, you know, the people of the world loved it, but the people of Paris did not like it very much, right.
No, they wanted to get rid of it, and it almost got torn down. I think in nineteen oh nine it came as close as it ever has and they said, no, no, we're going to use this as a radio telegraph station. So people in pairs were like, all right, as long as it's serving purpose, you know, because I can't remember who said it, but someone said that something that doesn't actually function can never truly be beautiful. Oh really, Yeah, it's something along those lines.
Yes, So like form overfunction basically.
Function over form or function and form function.
Well yeah, sure, I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah, oh we are speaking in code now, that's right. It finally happened. They also had what was called the Hygiene Palace at that expo, which sounds super gross, it does, but it was you know, it was at a time, you know, it was eighteen eighty nine, So hygiene, you know, we're talking like life saving hygiene, not like how to
smell less. So they showed like hospital stuff, medical stuff, how to raise They had real babies and showed like, here's how you raise a baby properly, right.
And then also speaking of babies, they made a full scale reproduction of the tower at the Madeline Hospital for Foundlings, which is where in Paris if you had a child, this is where you would leave it for somebody else to take over if.
You didn't want the child.
Right, Yes, exactly right. And they even had like a model of a baby and everything. And I don't know why they chose to include that, but.
They did, I don't know, maybe get the word out.
I guess so, because that was Yeah, they were trying to get the word out in the hygiene Palace, for sure.
It's interesting when you can look back at a thing like that and it can be both sort of the greatest thing and the saddest thing all at once.
You know, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah we should, Yeah we should build one. Yeah, well, it's funny you mentioned that I started one this morning. You can come over and help me finish it.
Awesome. That expo was very profitable. They made a ton of money on it. And I don't think we said at the beginning, like from the beginning, these world's fairs, a portion of the money that they make on these has gone or at least in the United States, has gone into funds that help that still help fund like industrial arts programs for students.
Yeah, that first Crystal Palace exhibition has a fellowship fund that helps people in industrial design get through grad school still today. From that's all from eighteen fifty one.
Yeah, should we break or should we talk about the nineteen hundred expo?
Let's talk about the nineteen hundred. So because just to kind of keep this contained for a second, basically, these biggest ones, the ones that really made the biggest splash, are still contained in Europe, largely Great Britain and France.
Okay, all right, I agree this one had the nineteen hundred attracted fifty million people.
That's crazy.
Yeah, I mean these are nineteen hundred people, so they're getting that many people. Yeah, I mean you can get fifty million people pretty easily together now in any given.
Space, for sure, it's like nothing, But it was.
A big deal back then. And again showcasing Paris is like sort of one of the leading modern cities. They debuted something pretty cool there called the Cinerama, which they still have these, and they have one of these in Atlanta, The Cyclorama in Atlanta is this kind of thing where you go in this sort of immersive theater experience where they have projections but also paintings and it's like a
three hundred and sixty degree screen. In their case, they simulated a balloon ride because it sounds like balloons were all the rage at the time.
For sure. They also had an actual balloon race, a long distance bloon race is part of the exposition. Yeah, that reminded me when I was reading about the Cineorama. When we did our Salt Lake City show that one time. Oh yeah, before the show, during the afternoon, I was walking around downtown Salt Lake and I ended up in like the main Mormon temple, and one of the things they have there as an exhibit is a it's basically
three hundred degrees. It's not three hundred and sixty, but it is really close, like high def movie screen that is right there in your face. Cool of Brigham Young like receiving the message from God. It was so disorienting that I ended up like staggering out of there in the middle of it, like I couldn't take it.
It was just overwhelming, the message or the three hundred degree I guess a.
Little bit of both, but I think the more the whole three hundred degree thing. It's interesting, the most immersive video experience I've ever seen by far.
Yeah, I'm wondering. I haven't been to the sphere in Vegas, but I'm wondering if I mean, it looks super cool. But I wonder if there is any sort of like, oh boy, this is too much kind of feeling.
Probably, I mean, it's Las Vegas.
Yeah, that's true, that's all too much.
So one of the great things about the nineteen hundred Exposition came from the United States. It was an exhibit by American black scholars including W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, who attended and basically said, here is all the progress that black Americans have made since the end of slavery. It sounds really cool.
Yeah. They had books, they had inventions, they had art, they had just straight up photographs of like, look, we have black nuns in the United States, we have black soldiers, we have black college students. And then apparently W. E. B. Dubois was sort of the early USA today because he loved making infographics, and he made info graphics showing like their literacy rates were rising, they were they owned taxable property,
and these were from actual Georgians I think, right. And then also like, hey, our literacy is so good among Black Americans, like we're better than Romania and Russia at this point.
Yeah, they that if I went and looked at some of Dubois's infographics, and they're really interesting, Like he came up with some really interesting ways to cram a bunch of data and the one page visually. So it's worth looking up, especially if you like colorful things.
Oh I do, and that is very USA today. Shall we break now? Yes, all right, we will be right back after this.
Well, now we're on the road driving in your Chuck want to learn a thing or two from Josh Chuck.
It's stuff you should.
Know, all right, all right, so we're back more world's fairs. Latin America's get involved now. I think this is after they had freed them spelled themselves from Spanish rule early nineteenth century. They wanted to again show like, hey, we're doing pretty well. Not only were they sending factions to other world's fairs like in Europe and the United States, but Cordoba and Buenos Aires, Argentina, had their own. Santiago,
Chile had their own. And this was like between the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties.
Yeah, at the time there's a lot of tension though, apparently between the country's boosters who are like, look at us, like we don't need Spanish rule. We're doing all this cool, interesting stuff and we're inventing all this stuff, and then others there were like, no, the point of this is to like sell ourselves as sources of raw materials right in places where you can over throw regimes to grow bananas more cheaply.
Yeah. I think that that was a big point, right, like, hey, we can actually make stuff here. We're not just to be sort of looted for what we can provide you precisely.
And then the people who made money from the country being looted, they were the ones who are like, no, no, no, we need to just show off how easily were looted.
Yeah, exactly. There were you know, speaking of looting, there were World's fairs and places that were colonized at the time. There was one in eighteen eighty three to eighty four in Calcutta, Kingston, Jamaica had one in eighteen ninety one Hanoi had one in nineteen oh two, and this was you know, hey, look at the local culture, but also like clearly coming from the colonizer side, like look how great they're doing thanks to.
Us, right exactly? Okay, So there were like they spread all over the world because they were so impressive, and they really did bring a lot of attention and industry and business in exports from these countries that were hosting these things. Like they were not just vanity projects. There really were big returns on them, and the US got
back in the game. I don't know if it was the first one after the Philadelphia one, it could have been, but far and away in the United States, the most famous world fair was the Chicago World's Fair of eighteen ninety three, the World's Columbian Exposition. It was a pretty good World's Fair, if I do say so myself.
Yeah, and if you're one of the gazillions of people who have emailed us over the years to do one on the Chicago World's Fair and HH Holmes the Serial Killer, we should probably do a standalone episode on that, because this is just going to be a sort of a quickie yeah, on Chicago, And I know there's a lot more to it than this, So I guess that's me
saying prepare to be disappointed a little bit. Yeah, but more like a preamble to like there'll be a deeper episode coming, because a lot of people have asked for this over time. It is, you know, mainly known for the fact that HH Holmes, serial killer was kidnapping young women who traveled to that Chicago fair and had his murder castle in Inglewood. And there was a great, great book called The Devil in the White City, which I
still haven't read, but everyone said it's just amazing. It's by Eric Larson, and it's on the list.
As far as popular histories go. It is easily in the top five. Yeah.
Man, they did read this.
So good, so readable. He does such a great job of putting you there, and it is like it does cover HH Holmes and all the terrible stuff he does in depth, but it also covers the fair in depth. It's just it was an amazing thing.
Yeah, So we're going to cover the fair not so in depth, but we're going to mention a few things. For sure. This is where we got cracker jacks. This is where we got the dishwasher. Sure, this is where we got the modern zipper, which they called a clasp blocker at the time.
We did an episode on that too in twenty twenty.
That's right.
What else The ferris wheel came from the eighteen ninety three expedition, which very quickly after that became like a staple of world's fares. And it was very appropriately designed by George Washington Gale Ferris Junior, who was from Pittsburgh, and the first one he designed was two hundred and sixty four feet tall, thirty six cars and offered a twenty minute ride in exchange for fifty cents, which is
about eighteen dollars today. And you could see the whole dang fare from the top of that ferris wheel, and it blew people's minds.
Yeah, I thought it was. When I was reading this, I thought it was interesting that they became a thing, but like more like a at least in the United States, more like a fair grounds or a carnival thing. And just more recently, like the past, like fifteen or twenty years, I feel like went back to this original idea, put like a huge ferris wheel in a downtown city just so you can see stuff.
Yeah, and bear in mind. Also at the time we kind of take it for granted now, But in the same way that you, the average person was not exposed to cutting edge techne and new ideas and awesome new products and stuff. People, especially in the Midwestern United States, we're not exposed to a view of two hundred and sixty four feet like this is an extremely novel experience for most of the people who attended that fair.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, Atlanta's got one. You ever been on that one?
No? I have not. I haven't been on a ferris wheel in a long long time.
Yeah, you know, London has the eye, Atlanta has theirs. It's you know, it's it was fun to take Ruby when she was little, but like, there's no reason for you to go on it.
Okay, good to know, even the London I have you been on that one?
I haven't been on that. But hey, there's a Ted's Montana Grill right there. The Tabernacle's right there. So if you got tickets to see a show at the Tabernacle, go eat at Ted's Montana Grill, have a Beisenberger check right on the ferris wheel, and then you've done it.
We're going to see Echo and the bunnymen in May, so we'll ride the ferris whee.
Remind me about that before it happens, because I might meet you there.
I just did, right.
No, man, that's in May. You got to remind me, like.
Three days I will. Maybe we can ride the ferris wheel together, you me, you, me, and Emily.
Oh man, our Instagram would blow up? Would you believe it?
I think I just blew some people's minds by saying you, me, you, me, and Emily.
Yeah, people get duck confused a lot. This is way off target because we were just talking about something that reminded me of it. But I had a funny Simpsons reference last night.
Wait a minute, you're about to go on a tangent because those aren't allowed on our podcast.
Do you ever make a joke that you know no one else will get? But so it's really a joke for you of.
Like eighty percent of the time.
Maybe I was watching or Emily was gone last night, so Ruby and I had a daddy daughter night in which we usually like order cheeseburgers and watch a like an action movie or something cute. And I showed her speed last night. Huh, And I queued it up and I was like, you're gonna love this. I'm not going to tell you anything about it, and she was like, no, wait, will you at least tell me the name of it. I know it's called the Bus that Couldn't slow Down? And she was like really, and I went, no, it's
a Simpson's joke. And then she wouldn't just let it go. She had me explain the whole thing, which you know, fell in deaf ears. But it's one of my all time favorite kind of Simpsons jokes.
I don't remember that joke.
It was Homer was describing a movie that he had just seen and he was like, oh, yeah, it's a bus whose speed couldn't slow down because if it had less speed it would blow up and the speed would cause it to whatever. And he said speed like eight times. And yeah, they asked him what the name of it was. He said, the Bus that Couldn't slow down.
Man, that show just keeps on giving doesn't know.
Speed holds up pretty good too.
By the way, Oh yeah, Keyunu Reeve's short hair is really great in that movie.
Yeah he was hunky and it's like, uh yeah, it really it was. I mean, it's so action packed. It was it was great. I enjoyed it.
Yeah, Dennis Hopper is a bad guy, crazed bad guy is pretty much timeless.
He's great, And I remember the bus stuff, but that's just the middle part. I forgot the whole first part. In the last part, which was also tons of action.
I don't remember that.
Yeah, go back and then watch it. We'll watch it before we go. In the ferris Wheel.
We just did a mini crush, I know we did.
Where are we? Oh, we're back at eighteen ninety three, because that's where electricity really came in.
Right, Yes, that was another big thing in Devil in the White City. They really went behind the scenes. I think there was a huge struggle between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison to get the contract to light the eighteen ninety three World's Fair in Westinghouse won yes, and he lit this fare up in Yeah, it was gorgeous. I didn't see it, but I read Eric Larson's description and it sounded just totally amazing.
Yeah, that sounds cool. That's also where Chicago really got a lot of its beautiful architecture that we love today. Yeah, with their neoclassical buildings, A lot of more temporary at the time, and that's why they called it the White City, but it really influenced the design going forward to promote that bows arts style. Is that how you say yeah thanks? And also if you're wondering like did they do that at other fairs? That's we got art deco from the nineteen twenty five exhibit in Paris.
Yes, And a little traveler's tip here, if you ever find yourself in New Zealand, I think the northern part of it to you yourself a favor and go visit. Napier is a small town. I don't remember what part of New Zealand it's in, but you really can't miss anything in New Zealand. It's not that big. And it suffered an earthquake and I think nineteen thirty one and like the whole downtown was leveled. So they were like, well,
what style is in right now? Oh? Art Deco, So they rebuilt their entire downtown in Art deco, all these amazing different buildings and amazing different colors and they have preserved it like perfectly.
Oh man, I love art deco. I got to check that out.
Oh yes, this is the Art Deco town known internationally as the Art Deco.
Had never heard of it. I thought you were going to recommend the River Tour, the architectural tour in Chicago.
I didn't take that one. That sounds kind of cool, though.
It's awesome for like a big, sort of large mass tour thing. It's really great.
Did Faris Buehler go on that in the movie? Because I know he was on a boat at some point, or they showed people on a boat.
I don't know if there's a shot of that or not.
All right, well let's just say there is.
Okay, but I did it, Chuck Buehler did.
Okay. Oh yeah, So that was eighteen ninety three, Like we said, go read that book. You will not regret it. And then jumping forward a little bit, but staying in the United States, there was a Saint Louis World's Fair in nineteen oh four. Have you ever seen meet me in Saint Louis?
Chuck, No, I take it that was you. That added that was a terrible sat a terrible musical.
Yes it was. It was like I didn't want to be I didn't want to exist for those couple of hours while I was sitting there watching this play. It's so dumb and the music is so stupid and everything about it is just terrible. Where do you see this at the Fox?
Wow? So like of a Broadway revival?
Yeah, in this period of American history, I just find creepy and I don't really like it anyway. You know, there's a lot of like susaphone music and stuff like that. Okay, So and this is like a whole thing set at that time and it's just it's not good dude.
Wow, all right.
Okay, So don't see it.
Okay, go see Hell's Kitchen instead or Operation Mincemeat.
Okay. But also there's a lot of misconstrued facts, I guess.
But yeah, this sounds like a bit of a I don't know. I don't like the nineteen oh four exhibit because they they said a lot of people say, like that's where the hamburger came from, and the hot dog and the ice cream cone, and some of that stuff is partly true.
Right, Yes, hot dogs were first served in buns at the nineteen oh four fair, but hot dogs already existed, right, ice cream cone wasn't invented there, But this is where the first place where a lot of people saw ice cream cones. For the first time.
It sounds like a bunch of junk food.
Yeah, it definitely was. Cotton candy was debuted at the nineteen oh four Fair, and I feel like there's a nice little twist to the inventor, don't you.
Yeah, he sold it as fairy floss. His name was William J. Morrison and he was in fact a dentist. I think that's one of those little fun facts that people like to throw around. Absolutely true. But it was also doctor Pepper debuted there, jello puffed ry cereal. It sounds just like a bunch of like American junk.
Yeah, this is where a lot of it came from, for sure. And then also just we might edit this part up, but just between you and me, the first electric plug and socket debuted there too, which is pretty say significant. But I want to give a little hat tip to Livia for explaining what an electric plug and socket does, which allowed lights and appliances to be safely attached to and detached from a central power supply.
Oh man, that is best.
That's the dedication that we can expect from Livia.
And also you can get way more in depth information. We kind of did a whole episode that covered this kind of thing in twenty nineteen our episode on human zoos and how awful they were, right, but they had stuff like that here, like Native villages and that's in quotes where they had very offensive, sort of misleading exhibits about Indigenous Americans and Filipinos and Africans and yeah, just a sort of a bummer of a world spare, I.
Think, yeah, for sure. Yeah, they would basically be like, hey, let's take every single racist conception or misconception and attitude what we have toward all these different groups and bring them to life. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. So yeah, that was it was a good episode, and that it was. It explained it pretty well, but it was definitely a bummer of an episode for sure.
Yeah, but you could wash it all down with the doctor Pepper, So what could be wrong?
That's right, and give somebody a big smile and like half of your teeth are missing?
All right. I think we're at our second break point, and we'll talk about sort of the next wave of worlds fares and then kind of the death of worlds fares right after this.
Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right.
So after World War One, worlds fares became less common and less successful. I blame uh going off of the gold standard, right, but there's still plenty that came along that you'll if you know anything about World's fares, pay any kind of attention to it. You'd be like, no, there was Expos sixty seven in Montreal, or there was Expos seventy in Osaka, Japan. Yes, yes, we'll get to
all those. But the general point is here is that they were less successful because people started to see radio, there were movies, or they started to listen to radio. Movies became widespread and very popular. And then simultaneously to that, there were so many World's fairs to choose from. No matter where you were in the world, you might be in a large air, a large city that has multiple World's fairs competing with one another, in the same region,
certainly the same country. That happened, and it became a bit of a mess. So this group called the Bureau International Expositions, the BIE, established in Paris. Of course, they said we're going to step in, We're going to start regulating these events. We're going to take this mess. We're going to mash it into a Devil's Tower plateau of mashed potatoes. We're going to create something coherent out of it.
Wow. Nice ref Yeah, they established some rules. Well, the first rule was like, unless it's officially sanctioned by US, it's not even a World's fare. So you got to go through US. It can't be more than six months. You can't run these things for nine twelve months. You got to have a theme, like get it together. Everyone like a party with a theme is so much better. Sure, And since then, this was in nineteen twenty eight, there
have only been fifty World's Fairs since. I guess they established in nineteen twenty eight, but nineteen thirty one is when they officially started sanctioning them, and there's only been fifty since then.
Right, Yeah. Can you imagine some poor guy who's like, hey, this isn't an official World's fair, wants their money back.
Yeah.
So after the Cold War started these things you kind of mentioned itset. They seem to be like different countries saying like look at how great we are. That was a huge part of World's fairs that were during the Cold War. Especially between the American and the Soviet pavilions. Yeah, they were like basically like, here's the stage where we can show the rest of the world how much better we are than you Russia and vice versa.
Yeah. Absolutely, A little fun fact we got to throw in there. Do you remember the Montreal Expos which are now the Washington Nationals in Major League Baseball? That name came from the Montreal Expo that happened in nineteen sixty seven. Yep, it's fun little fact. New York had a couple of big ones and queens. They had one in thirty nine and forty. The World of Tomorrow was a big theme, and the debut things like air conditioning, television, nylon stockings
pretty good. They debuted a robot that smoked cigarettes named Electro who had a dog, a robot dog named Sparko, And this was kind of notable, mostly for well, for those things, but also the fact that they were able to put a bunch of money into reclaiming Flushing Meadows in Corona Park, which at the time was a dumping ground for ash and just a really gross spot. But you know, when you fly, if you see men in black,
are you fly over it? It's where the New York Mets used to be, and you would see that big steel globe from Men in Black very famously that was the New York World's Fair in thirty nine and forty.
Yeah. I looked at pictures of electro and he looks like a nineteen thirty nine robot for sure, huge barrel chest. And then like like I a little bit like mister Roboto, but a little less detailed in the face, but he does smoke cigarettes. I saw it.
It's nice.
One of the other things about World Fairs, too, is depending on what the world was doing, Like for example, if they were about to enter a world war or were already embroiled in one, it could make some awkward stuff. Like Germany was going to open a pavilion at the nineteen thirty nine World's Fair, and after they invaded Czechoslovakia, the rest of the war was like, no, you're not
allowed here at this World's Fair. The UK, poland Czechoslovakia a few other countries that were already involved in World War Two had pavilions there, and so like stuff that was going on in Europe was being reflected in the World's Fair.
Yeah, for sure, we're heading back to Queens because I mentioned they had two there, and they had their second one there in sixty four sixty five, and this was a pretty pretty big one too. I think this is where that spear came from, was the sixty four sixty five if I'm not mistaken. This is where computers really made their first big go. IBM had a huge they had like an acre acre size spot display, They had a This is where where Walt Disney really made a big splash.
Two.
I think they debuted It's a small the literal it's a small world ride there, mm hmm, which is pretty cool. And then if you've ever been to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando and rode or ridden the Carousel of Progress that need its debut there. That was ge you know, and if you've ever written it, it's clearly like a like, hey, look what's going to happen not too far from now.
Yeah, And they did one for the state of Illinois too, and I looked that up and apparently they created an animatronic talking abe Lincoln, which I believe ended up giving rise to the Hall of Presidents.
Yeah, yeah, just to the creepy era things you can do at Disney.
It really is. One of the other things is that the nineteen sixty four World's Fair was so g whiz look at the future that Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, was prompted to write an essay yeah, about what the World's Fair in twenty fourteen, fifty years in the future would look like. And he got some right. He missed the mark a little bit, like, for example, he got right that robots will neither be common nor very good in twenty fourteen, but they will be in existence.
That's certainly true. They're getting better now. But twenty fourteen robots, the one I had was not very impressive.
Did it smoke cigarettes?
Though it did? Well? It did, we did.
That's the key to a good robot.
I had to have a smoking Buddy's.
Right, what else, chuck? What else did he say?
Well, this one is interesting because it sounds like he got it just right, but just you know, you'll have to hear the after the afterward he said that society will suffer mental, emotional, and socio psychological consequences from our technology. And if you read that, you think, man, he'd nailed it in nineteen sixty four, like right on the head.
But he had a different take than that. He was like, no, that's going to happen because it's going to be like Wall E basically where nobody works because robots are doing everything, and we're gonna suffer from what he called enforced leisure.
Mm hm.
And everyone's just going to be lazy and it's going to be awful. And he said the most glorious single word in the world will have become work. It's cute.
He missed that mark a little bit for sure.
Yeah.
So the nineteen sixty four World's Fair was basically the last great World's Fair that the United States ever threw. There have been plenty of great World's Fairs since then, but as far as the US is concerned, sixty four was the last good one. Sixty two in Seattle that gave us the space needle. It was called the Century
twenty one Expo, and ten million people showed up. And this kind of showed the beginning of a trend of declining attendants in the fairs that were thrown in America, because this was about the time that Americans decided that we wanted to stop being informed.
Yeah, and you know, we're not bagging on any of these cities and any of their World's Fairs. It's just sort of a fact that this is when attendance really started to win. Some of them lost a lot of money. We love that space needle, but ten million people isn't like two years later in New York there were fifty six million, right. And that brings us to New Orleans and the Louisiana World Exposition of nineteen eighty four. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the world, truly, truly,
deep down, I love New Orleans. Nice, but they put on a pretty shoddy World's Fair in nineteen eighty four.
Yeah, I mean it was really heavy on the New Orleans culture, Like they have a lot to show scroff as far as that's concerned. The amphitheater there was designed by Frank Geary. The parts that were done well were just little magical spots, right, Yeah. But there are also lots of parts that were like asphalt and concrete thoroughfares that just kind of looked like like just something you might stumble upon in a park in a small town at some point, like with the booths set up along
each side. Some of the actual design struck and buildings were very very bland. And then one of the main reasons they wanted to throw this was because they wanted to revitalize New Orleans as a town where you could just come outside of Marti Graus, outside of JazzFest, like
you can just come anytime and it'll be fun. So the riverfront that they were promoting was largely abandoned, was pretty run down, and this is where they built the World's Fair area, so you could kind of see the reality of the area at the edges pretty clearly.
Yeah, I mean some of the stuff wasn't even finished. So this isn't just us again, like with our opinions on things like when you have two massive alligator statues atop the Wonder Wall and Bayou Plaza and they're not done and along their backs there's not even you know, alligator scales and it's just the metal structure that was underneath. It's not great. It was unfinished. They you know, if you were from New Orleans and Louisiana, you probably had
a great time. A lot of people had a great time, but they you know, Ronald Reagan didn't even go. I think the president almost always goes or had always gone to attend the opening, less than ten million people went, and they lost a ton of money on it.
Yeah, And so to be fair, like, this wasn't just New Orleans faulty. They were victims of this long standing or this trend. Yeah, I guess it was long standing by then of American attendance being pretty shoddy. Yeah. The Knoxville World's Fair, which gave us the Sun's Fear, which is that one that was held two years before Epcot came along two years before, and it built itself as
a permanent World's Fair. Not fair, Nope. The Olympics were being held in La that same year, and it was sucking a lot of the enthusiasm and energy over to the West Coast plus Louisiana and surrounding states like Texas, where you would rely on a lot of your visitors to come from their local economies just went in the toilet because the oil industry hit a huge bust time.
Yeah, I mean, I think the organizers for the New Orleans Fair went bankrupt. They lost more than one hundred and twenty million bucks. Creditors apparently allegedly got back eight cents on the dollar. And it was it was such a bus that they canceled the nineteen ninety two World's Fair in Chicago. Yeah, it was. It was not great.
No, But like we said that, there have been plenty of There were plenty of non American thrown World Fairs that were outstanding. One of the ones that frequently gets pointed to is Osaka in nineteen seventy. And this is about the time. So Europe kind of kicked it off. It spread throughout the world. America did its best to kind of take over for a while, and then it moved east. The kind of the epicenter of where World's Fairs are held moved from the to the Middle East
and East generally more often than not these days. And Osaka seventy seemed to kind of kick that off.
Yeah. They debuted Imax movies in nineteen seventy and Osaka with a seventeen minute film called Tiger Child. I think to the twenty ten Expo in Shanghai, I think has the record right of visitors, seventy three million people, the largest of all time. So that's you know, they're certainly not dead. I was wondering at some point a couple of years ago, like what happened to the World's fairs, and you know, they're just happening in a big, big way in places like Shanghai, so it's not as much
on my radar. And also I think things like CEES, the Consumer Electronics Show and other sort of specific industry expos and trade shows have sort of dampened the appetite for these, you think.
For sure, but they are still around. Osaka is going to hold another one or I'm sorry it held another one in twenty twenty five. There's one in Belgrade Survior Belgrad, can't remember which what you say, that's coming in twenty twenty seven, and then Riad, Saudi Arabia is I think the furthest Out one that's already scheduled for twenty thirty, so it's definitely still happening. I would like to go to one, just to see what the heck's going on. I'd like to go to the Bellgrade one.
Oh, that'd be cool.
And also just one other thing, I want to just shout out Expo seventy in Osaka. That is where Umi's aunt and uncle met. Oh nice, yeah, I thought so too. He was a smoking robot, she was a showgirl.
Classic story.
You got anything else? I got nothing else all right, Well that's it, everybody. That's World's Fairs. I guess we'll see you in Belgrade in twenty twenty seven. And until then, Chuck, I say, it's time for listener mail.
That's right. We heard from a lot of people about our short stuff on the mcguffin. We're talking about that, which was pretty it was pretty fun. I think it was kind of appropriate that we couldn't quite define it, cause it's quite hard to define.
Okay, fair enough, but we heard.
From a writer director legit. Hey guys, I'm a writer director from lat I could share how I've always viewed the mcguffin. When you're trying to develop a film plot, you might have a specific location or scenario that you want your characters to end up in, but sometimes you can't think of a natural way to get them there.
So that's where you throw into mcguffin. In fact, if you're really in the zone while you're writing, you can use it as a placeholder even and say, like the protagonist stops by the house to grab a mcguffin, only to find a dead body in the art. One of the reasons it can be difficult to identify a mcguffin from a specific movie is because the writer might be disguising it to avoid what could be perceived as lazy screenwriting.
One of the more obvious examples is a character needing to find the secret map that leads to the treasure or the next clue. That is from Josh Beck, writer director, And like I said, we heard from a lot of people. One was kind of funny. We heard from somebody who kind of said, I don't care what George Lucas says. R two D two is not a mcguffin. It's the plans that are mcguffin, because the person is never the mcguffin,
it's the object. And I had the great sorrow to write this person and say, I'm sorry to break it to you, but Archie dtwo is an object and not a person. I know it's true, though, Like if the whole point to this writer's email was hey, it's not the person, it's the object, it's like, well, and android isn't a person.
So I feel like then Josh backed you up that the mcguffin is totally irrelevant to what you care about in the whole thing, and that it's kind of like this thing that gets you to the thing that's the point, which is basically what you were saying. Yes, okay, so the first time when you brought it up in some other episode and that short stuff, you stuck to your gun,
So it sounds like you were right. But then all of those people out there who are like Multi's falcon is the quintessential example of the mcguffin, that is just wrong. Then that's not true. Yes, it's the point of the whole thing. Everything everyone's doing is centered around getting their hands on the Maltese falcon. Nothing else matters. There's no interpersonal stuff that really matters. That is the point of everything. So it can't possibly be a mcguffin.
Is But is the Maltese falcon itself important? Like yes, well, what what does it do?
It gives you riches beyond measure?
Oh okay, it's like yes.
And it's irreplaceable. It's its own thing. It's it is not a mcguffin, And I don't ever want to talk about mcguffins again after this. I'm so sorry that I ever brought it up.
We also heard from a lot of people who pointed out the Big Bang Theory TV show thing where they say that Indiana Jones was a mcguffin himself. That's because if he was not a part of that movie, like nothing, nothing would have mattered, Like the the Nazis would have opened up the arc and it would have killed them all and nothing would have changed.
Uh.
Yeah, I don't know about that, because it ended up in his hands and ended up in the storage. But I don't know.
That's a huh. I hadn't thought about that point. Wow, that Chuck Laurie, he's amazing.
Yeah.
Did I ever tell you about the time we were in Los Angeles and it was the day after Charlie Sheen's meltdown and like the entire future of like that whole show was up in the air. We just happened to be in LA that one day, and I just happened to be walking at the McDonald's that John Cryer happened to go to and started stress eating like a McMuffin in his Mercedes.
A mcguffin. Now I remember you telling me that story. That is incredible.
Think about the timing, all the different little things that had to happen to just bring me to pass to see that one guy whose issues were on the world stage right then yea, it was nuts. Yeah, So I hope he's doing better.
Oh, he's doing fine.
Good. Well, that was Josh who wrote in, And thanks to everybody who wrote in about mcguffin's. We did get a lot of great emails from everybody, so thank you. And if you want to write us a great email, whether you're a writer or director, both neither doesn't matter. We want to hear from you. Send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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