I’ve been looking through a box of Grandpa’s World’s Fair things, and I can’t help but imagine being there in ’64. Seeing it all through his eyes. Wondering what else he experienced that can’t be seen here in these souvenirs. Thinking about it gets my imagination racing. My mind filling with enough possible scenarios to fill a small world. That’s right. I said it. Because it’s true!
And after discussing Grandpa with Mom the other day (or ambushing her with the video camera – whatever you want to call it), I’ve been thinking about how to continue sharing our discoveries with her. To have her maybe join this journey we’ve embarked on. But some of Grandpa’s stuff might be a bit too out there for her to jump into right away. Especially when she’s seeing all of this with fresh eyes. So I thought the World’s Fair swag might be a nice bridge to Grandpa’s mysterious past.
Really, I’ve just been wanting to talk about Grandpa with her. That’s all. I want him to be a part of our lives again and, deep down, I believe Mom does too. We miss him. I know we do. So, this is what I showed her.
Good for you Amelia! That seems like an awesome way to slowly bring your mom in. I am so happy that things are progressing nicely for you
I wonder what can be learned from this pile of his things!
Thanks, Rachel! What I learned is that Grandpa really took care of his souvenirs.
Seriously. Those look just like new, it’s amazing how well your grandfather kept them for the past 50 years!
Amelia,
Cool stuff! Probably a good idea to show your mom this stuff as a starter.
I’m curious, can you tell us anything about what’s in that small box in the upper left hand corner? I can’t make it out, but it looks interesting!
Just a small pack of slides of images from the World’s Fair.
Amelia! Slides are awesome! You should totally make some prints. When I was going through some old family stuff, I didn’t have a slide viewer or projector, but I wanted to see which slides were worthwhile to print. I did this method: http://www.instructables.com/id/Hows-to-make-an-inexpensive-35mm-Slide-Viewer/ and it totally works. I know how busy you are, but if you get around to it, I recommend this *near* free way to check out what you’ve got.
Are they pictures your grandpa took, or they promotional pictures? Defiantly try to scan them in. We’d love to see them!
Brilliant Amelia! None of this stuff looks too out there! Do you think your mom visited the World’s Fair when your dad was working there?
Oops, I mean her dad :0
Since it’s come up, Amelia what’s the story with YOUR father? You haven’t mentioned him at all, not even once.
So have you taken the slides out and looked at them? 3 slide cases I can see. Can you scan then or take pics of them for us to see?
Good job Amelia, this is some cool stuff. And I love the Unisphere…I just posted a picture of it.
I love the Unisphere too! Awesome!
you should go sometime to Flushing Meadows in Queens, it is still there, i went once as a little kid, but ithas been 20 years since I have been there!
Smart, Amelia. A good way to bring her in, can’t wait to hear some if what she has to say. Tell her one of your “friends” has great memories of the Fair with his Mom and Dad, does she have World’s Fair memories?
I live in Brooklyn. I dont know if I can get to the Unisphere.
I think it’s a great idea to regroup and take a new approached. Instead of questions, start with memories. If your mom does have mixed feelings about talking about him, then focus on the good things and not the secrets. In the meantime, we’ll be here and happy to discuss all the secret stuff with you while you and your mom connect with your grandpa again through these great mementos.
If you’re really interested, there’s a lot of information out there. So many guides, websites, and collections. I have a lot of video collected, and a lot is available, such as on Youtube, or other guides. There’s also the audio collection Disney released a few years ago. A student group at my school was also trying to create a virtual fair for folks to relive.
Remember Michael Lott from that construction company last week? He and his boys were some of the first to ride “It’s a Small World”. He said they rode it like three times in a row. To think your grandad could have gone through the ride with MT Lott. We are all connected!
I got that same response from Lott
I am in agreement with Eric start with memories, it seems your Grandad was quite the saver. With all these items you should have a lot to talk about.
Sorry Derek:(
Does anyone else think that the TU shaped strange writing from the table at the Tam looks at all similar to the orbit shape around the unisphere on the case for the colored slides in the above picture? It is kind of like you when you are writing on a paper and then you accidentally go to far and write on the table too by accident. Then when you remove the paper all you see is what you wrote on the table. May I am reaching but it just kind of stuck out to me when I looked at the picture.
Looks like the Lincoln item and the Four Winds item are both souvenir records from the Fair.
The Lincoln item looks to be a postcard. The Four Winds item looks to be a small peripheral print on card stock. If a slide is approx. 2″ x 2″ (just estimating), these items are pretty small.
That opened slide box in the upper left corner is odd though. The exposed top slide looks to be 3 dimensional (some sort of small metal object, a round concave area with 2 wingtips extending out of the bottom). Zoom in and look and the right wingtip, it extends into the slide frame. You also wouldn’t see the image with this much clarity if it was just a slide.
Any thoughts? Amelia has already said that it’s, “Just a small pack of slides of images.” I’m not sure about that.
Yeah, but if you goggle both the Lincoln item and the Four Winds items there are plenty of pictures that show they’re records. There are even some up for sale on ebay.
lots of events back then had these, it was a record inside a postcard so you could mail someone a souvenir
Ahhh, I see …
I think that 3-D object isn’t part of the slide but rather a small magnifier you can use to look at the slide. My grandparents had a ton of slides and the little boxes came with those for convenience.
Here’s a larger image of those 2 World’s Fair entry tickets:
Great strategy Amelia! That’s a good way of including your mom.
And that Unisphere is awesome!
That ini
The unisphere reminds me again of the globe mentioned in the script from Amelia’s last update. I wonder if the globe at the fair could have been an inspiration for that bit, or if they are perhaps connected in some way…
Do those two lines that cross over hit any kind of place, kinda like an ‘X marks the spot’?
The ones on the globe? It looks like they should intersect in twelve spots since there are three rings. not totally sure if twelve is correct (my math is a little questionable sometimes) but that should be right! So there should be twelve Xs.
… Twelve seems like a lot haha. Now I’m unsure of myself.
Wow, Wallace must have some of this stuff, his small world poster looks EXACTLY the same! So cool! I’m glad you had a nice moment with your mom too. It’s awesome that you are finding all this cool stuff so well preserved.
Hey Guys – Something about this Unisphere globe souvenir is driving me crazy, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I feel like something about it is off and in plain sight.
1.) I searched for “unisphere souvenir” in google images and ebay for pages and pages and never found a duplicate of it. If anything, it’s a rare item?
2.) I tried using google maps to look at the unisphere, and a huge swath of the image is blurry. I know that’s circumstantial as that often happens with 360 panorama stitching, but it does feel odd since we saw so much google maps blurring at other location mentioned like in Rhode Island.
At first I thought maybe the rings didn’t match up with the actual thing, after all I think I remember the rings intending to be aligned to satellites in the air at the time of the 64 world’s fair, so it’d be interesting if they weren’t correct, but as best as I can tell, the rings are correct, though it’s hard to be sure because Amelia’s photo is pointed at Asia and nearly every other photo I can find online is pointed at either North America or Africa. In short – it’s driving me nuts!
The website below shows information on the original manufacturer of the Unisphere model.
http://www.precisemodelsllc.com/Pages/ToppingModels.aspx
Cool … AND … on the same website, the unisphere model shown in Amelia’s pic:
Thanks for posting that picture. The info was pretty far down the page, so that helps. I appreciate it.
From wikipedia:
“Three large orbit rings of stainless steel encircle the Unisphere at various angles. These orbit rings are believed to represent the tracks of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, and Telstar, the first active communications satellite. In fact, the early design was to have a ring for each of a dozen satellites in place at the time of the Fair. This proved impractical not only in the number of satellites, but also in the height of their orbits and the fact that geostationary satellites had no orbit path. As a result a symbolic number of three was chosen for aesthetic reasons.”
Wonderful souvenirs, and in a great condition. Feels like being there almost 50 years ago. What a treasure chest this is.
That’s exactly what I just read! It’s interesting how the rings almost match up with the orbits of the satellites on Walters picture.
wonderful idea, Amelia, to slowly start your mom talking with you about your grandfather with these souvenirs from the world’s fair. after looking at your photo and the others posted here, i did a quick google search and discovered a blog by a disney mom and here’s the link to her post about the World’s Fair attractions Walt Disney helped create (and are at the parks). http://www.adisneymomsthoughts.com/2012/10/destination-disney-in-quotes-1964.html
Great idea. I think showing this will be a good starter.
just so no one forgets, there is also a picture of the Unisphere in the main page of the http://www.lottfamilyconstruction.com website. With all of these references; the script, the Souvenir, picture on lott site, and the “IASW’ poster. There has to be something there!
I was looking closer at the box of slides and their seem to be words around the outside. Could that be important?
Usually if you bought a souvenir set of slides someplace, the white frame around the image would be printed with the t-i-t-l-e at the bottom and contact or copyright information around the other sides. Maybe some of you who found the wonderful images of the other souvenirs on various websites could find an image of this slide set?
Ok that makes sense
Stephen C and I are thinking of visiting the fair grounds this weekend. Could be a red herring but we are still talking so much about the 64 fair, there must be something we’re missing.
Good idea but I don’t know if they would put something there
My little historian’s heart is loving all the ephemera you’ve gathered in the picture! I think it’s the perfect way to broach the subject with your Mom again – something tangible she can connect with.
I love the Unisphere! I grew up 10 minutes from Flushing Meadows and my parents and my husband’s parents went to the 64/65 fair.FYI US Steel built the Unisphere and The Contemporary Resort.