1939 New York World's Fair and a Future Through Science

Carl Sagan describes seeing the World's Fair as a youth.

The 1939 New York World's Fair - that so transfixed me as a small visitor from darkest Brooklyn - was about 'The World of Tomorrow'. Merely by adopting such a motif, it promised that there would be a world of tomorrow, and the most casual glance affirmed that it would be better than the world of 1939. Although the nuance wholly passed me by, many people longed for such a reassurance on the eve of the most brutal and calamitous war in human history. I knew at least that I would be growing up in the future. The sleek and clean 'tomorrow' portrayed by the Fair was appealing and hopeful. And something called science was plainly the means by which that future would be realized.