Frank Beacham's Journal

The 1964 World’s Fair opened 57 years ago today

When the 1964 World’s Fair opened 57 years ago today, the architectural star of the show was Philip Johnson’s soaring, futuristic New York State Pavilion.

“A sophisticated frivolity,” The Times’s architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable raved, “seriously and beautifully constructed. This is ‘carnival’ with class.”

Standing inside the pavilion’s Tent of Tomorrow, a multicolored canopy supported by 100-foot concrete towers, was like looking up at a spacecraft taking off. For years, the pavilion has been shuttered and in disrepair, slowly crumbling. The pavilion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

In the fall of 2013, New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation announced plans to restore the pavilion with new landscaped paths and event spaces at an estimated cost of $73 million, as opposed to the $14 million cost to demolish the structure.

Renewed interest was shown in the pavilion's restoration in early 2014, the 50th anniversary of its opening.

In July, 2014, the pavilion received about $5.8 million for restoration. The New York Mets also donated some money for the preservation effort. However, the pavilion was damaged the same month by arsonists.

In May, 2015, the New York Structural Steel Painting Contractors Association, in conjunction with the New York City Parks department and members of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (District Council 9, Local 806), announced a project to repaint the rusty steel framework of the Tent of Tomorrow.

After testing paint chips, the color "American Cheese Yellow" was selected as the best match for the original color. The majority of the labor was done by union trainees, and materials were supplied by the contractors, constituting a $3 million donation. All work was completed by August 15th, 2015.

The Pavilion is the subject of a documentary film titled, Modern Ruin: A World's Fair Pavilion, produced by filmmaker and teacher Matthew Silva. The documentary premiered on May 22, 2015 in the Queens Theatre which was formerly the theaterama, the third component of the New York State Pavilion.

In March, 2016, People For the Pavilion and the National Trust for Historic preservation launched an international ideas competition to allow the public to reimagine possibilities for what is possible for the pavilion.

Two proposed designs for the New York State Pavilion's restoration won New York City's 2018 Annual Awards for Excellence in Design. As of June 2018, the New York City government planned to award contracts for the pavilion's restoration, set to be worth $14.25 million. The restoration was planned to take one and a half years but was delayed due to construction and pandemic issues. It is uncertain when it will be finished.

Below, Observatory Towers of the New York State Pavilion, 1964 World's Fair

Photo by Erik S. Lieber

Fifty-seven years ago today, folk singer Oscar Brand provided the music for this "film poem," a day in the life of the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, New York.

All major areas of the fair are represented — international, industrial, federal and states, transportation and amusements. The narration form gives the film its title — Oscar Brand sings the "Ballad." The song was specially written for the film.

Some of the construction leading up to opening day is contrasted to the finished appearance of the grounds later in the film. Many pavilions and the Unisphere are shown, but the Bell Pavilion is the main focus.

The "Floating Wing" pavilion of the Bell System is given a quick tour, as people ride the 17-minute moving, Disney-style slow ride through telecommunications history (with music by Morton Gould), and visit such exhibits as The Vocoder, Patterns of your Voice, Electronic Switching and the Picturephone.

The film closes with the fireworks and water show that was produced nightly in front of the Bell Pavilion at the Pool of Industry.

While the Unisphere still exists on the Queens fairgrounds (now the Flushing Meadows park), most buildings were torn down or removed following the Fair. The giant tire ferris wheel for Royal Tire is a landmark along I-94 west of Detroit, Michigan. The Skyway tower structures and gondolas were moved to Six Flags Great Adventure (at that time called Great Adventure) in New Jersey. "It's a Small World" was transferred to Disneyland.

Nothing remains of the Bell Pavilion. But many of the ideas in this pavilion about communications and the future were later transferred to the "Spaceship Earth" building at Epcot Center, which opened in 1982 sponsored by Bell, then sponsored by AT&T from 1984 to 2004.

On this day in 1926 — 95 years ago — Western Electric and the Warner Brothers film studio introduced Vitaphone, a new process that enabled the addition of sound to film

On this day in 1926 — 95 years ago — Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), and the Warner Brothers film studio introduced Vitaphone, a new process that enabled the addition of sound to film.

By the mid-1920s, several competing systems had been developed to add sound to motion pictures. In 1923, inventor Lee de Forest demonstrated Phonofilm, in which music was recorded on a narrow strip at the edge of the film.

When De Forest tried to sell Phonofilm to the major Hollywood movie studios, they rejected it, dismissing “talking pictures” as a novelty that was not worth the cost. De Forest’s sound-on-film system evolved into the Movietone sound process, introduced in 1927.

The major studios also turned away Western Electric, makers of Vitaphone, in 1925. The Vitaphone system logged sound on a record linked electronically to the projector, keeping sound synchronized with image. Because the precise alignment of projector and phonograph had to be set by hand, the system was prone to human error. Also outfitting a movie theater for a Vitaphone sound system was also extremely costly.

Warner Brothers, then a minor studio, decided to act aggressively. It sank $3 million into the promotion of Vitaphone, which the studio announced it would use to provide synchronized musical accompaniment for all its films.

Vitaphone debuted in August, 1926 with the costume drama, Don Juan, starring John Barrymore and featuring an orchestral score by the New York Philharmonic.

The following year, Warner Brothers released its second Vitaphone feature, The Jazz Singer, which included classical and popular music, as well as about 350 words of dialogue.

The success of these two films led directly to the motion-picture industry’s conversion to sound, as the major studios quickly lobbied to gain the rights to use Vitaphone as well.

Warner Brothers agreed to give up its exclusive rights to the system in exchange for a share of the royalties, and by the spring of 1928 virtually every Hollywood studio had jumped on the sound bandwagon.

The filming of Show Girl in Hollywood, an early talkie film, at the First National studio lot, now the KTLA Studios on Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles.

The film features Alice White, then girlfriend of the film’s director, Mervyn LeRoy, in a part suited to her perky personality.

The film has many scenes on the First National studio lot. It features two big production numbers that were originally filmed in Technicolor.

Silent star Blanche Sweet turns in an outstanding and naturalistic performance as the star who is over the hill at 32.

And the Vitaphone recording process is on view prominently during the “I’ve Got My Eye On You” production number.

This film used Vitaphone disks being cut while filming. The three cameras are shown grinding away simultaneously from inside their large box-like soundproof kiosks. 

The film was released in April, 1930 and Warner Brothers had already started their switch from disks to sound-on-film like all the other studios.

The debut of the 1925 motion picture, Lost World, an adaptation by Arthur Conan Doyle, took place in Germany on an Imperial Airways airplane flying over Berlin.

Music for the film premiere was live on the ground and broadcast to the airplane via the new medium of radio over a loudspeaker on the plane supplied by the Berlin Broadcasting Station.

Since the flight was the daylight hours, the pilot of the plane flew through dense banks of clouds to darken the cabin so watching the motion picture was more effective.

The experiment was illustrated in the July, 1926 issue of Science and Invention magazine, with this diagram explaining how the landmark audio-visual feat was achieved.

The first jukebox was installed at the Palais Royale in San Francisco in 1889

The first jukebox was installed at the Palais Royale in San Francisco in 1889.

It was built by the Pacific Phonograph Company. Four stethoscope-like tubes were attached to an an Edison Class M electric photograph fitted inside an oak cabinet.

The jukebox became an overnight sensation.

The hallucinogenic effects of LSD were discovered 78 years ago today

The hallucinogenic effects of LSD were discovered 78 years ago today.

In Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumed LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds.

After taking the drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide, Dr. Hoffman was disturbed by unusual sensations and hallucinations. In his notes, he related the experience:

"Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination.

In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away."

After intentionally taking the drug again to confirm that it had caused this strange physical and mental state, Dr. Hoffman published a report announcing his discovery. LSD made its entry into the world as a hallucinogenic drug.

Widespread use of the "mind-expanding" drug did not begin until the 1960s, when counterculture figures such as Albert M. Hubbard, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey publicly expounded on the benefits of using LSD as a recreational drug.

The manufacture, sale, possession and use of LSD, known to cause negative reactions in some of those who took it, were made illegal in the United States in 1965.

Image of Hoffman by Alex Gray

Thanks History.com

Audio recording is 161 years old today

Audio recording is 161 years old today.

The first recording was made on April 9, 1860, 17 years before Thomas Edison's patent. A verse of "Au Clair de la Lune" sung by a woman, the first recording was made by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, who invented the phonoautograph.

The phonoautograph transcribed sound waves as undulations or other deviations in a line traced on smoke-blackened paper or glass. Intended solely as a laboratory instrument for the study of acoustics, it could be used to visually study and measure the amplitude envelopes and waveforms of speech and other sounds.

It could also be used to determine the frequency of a given musical pitch by comparison with a simultaneously recorded reference frequency. Apparently, it did not occur to anyone before the 1870s that the recordings, called phonautograms, contained enough information about the sound that they could, in theory, be used to recreate it.

Because the phonautogram tracing was an insubstantial two-dimensional line, direct physical playback was impossible in any case.

Several phonautograms recorded before 1861 were successfully played as sound in 2008 by optically scanning them and using a computer to process the scans into digital audio files. Here is the sound of the first recording.

Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam, is 79 years old today

Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam, is 79 years old today.

Brown's invention allows cameramen to film while walking without the normal shaking and jostles of a handheld camera.

The Steadicam was first used in the Hal Ashby film, Bound for Glory (1976), receiving an Academy Award (Best Cinematography), and since used on such films as Rocky, filming Rocky's running and training sequences, and Return of the Jedi, where Brown walked with the Steadicam shooting film at one frame per second to achieve the illusion of high speed motion during the speeder bike chase.

The sequence in Rocky that took the audience up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum for the triumphant moment at the top was first filmed during tests for the original Steadicam system. When shown the footage, director John Avildsen thought it would fit well into the training sequence.

In the subsequent decades, tens of thousands of visitors to Philadelphia have taken the time to visit that locale and run up the steps, alone or in groups, to enjoy that unique view and share in the energy and triumphant feeling evoked in that sequence.

The Steadicam was used extensively on Stanley Kubrick's 1980 classic horror film, The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson. Brown's Steadicam work can be seen in over seventy motion pictures. The device has how evolved into an inexpensive tool for shooting steady shots with iPhones.

Brown has also invented the SkyCam (for football games), DiveCam (following olympic divers) and MobyCam (underwater camera following olympic swimmers).

Garrett Brown is the father of Jonathan Brown, a professional cinematographer in his own right. Both worked together as Steadicam operators on the film, Bulworth, directed by and starring Warren Beatty. Brown won a technical Oscar for his invention of the Steadicam.

I studied the Steadicam with Brown in the early 1980s, and became a certified Steadicam operator.

Brown insisted carrying all that heavy weight would not hurt operators, though both of us now have bad backs. All in the name of promotion!

On this day in 1949 — 72 years ago — RCA Victor introduced the 45 rpm single record, which had been in development since 1940

On this day in 1949 — 72 years ago — RCA Victor introduced the 45 rpm single record, which had been in development since 1940.

The seven-inch disc was designed to compete with the Long Playing record introduced by Columbia a year earlier. Both formats offered better fidelity and longer playing time than the 78rpm record that was then currently in use.

Advertisements for new record players boasted that with 45rpm records, the listener could hear up to ten records with speedy, silent, hardly noticeable changes.

Hymen Lipman patented the pencil-and-eraser on this day in 1858. It changed writing forever

The pencil with an eraser on its end is an American invention, depending on what your definition of invention is.

Hymen Lipman of Philadelphia patented the pencil-and-eraser on this day in 1858.

An early milestone in its development was the 16th century discovery of a large deposit of graphite in England, which led to the mineral’s widespread use in writing. At first it was wrapped in string, then later in hollowed-out wood.

A German company, Faber-Castell, contributed the innovation of a hexagonal shape, to prevent it from rolling.

The modern pencil’s trademark yellow color goes back to China, which produced the best graphite. U.S. manufacturers used the color, which represented royalty in China, to signal to consumers their product’s grandness.

The rubber eraser came in 1770, credited to Edward Nairne, an English engineer. (Until then, soft bread was used as erasers.)

Lipman’s creation made him rich when an entrepreneur, Joseph Reckendorfer, paid him $100,000 for the patent. That’s nearly $3 million in today’s dollars.

Reckendorfer had hoped to make a great deal more money, but the Supreme Court declared the patent invalid in 1875.

The justices said Lipman’s pencil did not count as an invention because the pencil and eraser already existed. It was not enough to simply join them together.

Thanks New York Times!

On this day in 1929 — 92 years ago — President Herbert Hoover had the first telephone installed at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House

On this day in 1929 — 92 years ago — President Herbert Hoover had the first telephone installed at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House.

It took a while to get the line to Hoover's desk working correctly and the president complained to aides when his son was unable to get through on the Oval Office phone from an outside line.

Previously, Hoover had used a phone located in the foyer just outside the office.

Telephones and a telephone switchboard had been in use at the White House since 1878, when President Rutherford B. Hayes had the first one installed, but no phone had ever been installed at the president's desk until Hoover's administration.

Les Paul’s first invention...

What was Les Paul’s first invention?

The harmonica holder...the same type used by artists like Bob Dylan.

While living in Waukesha, Wisconsin, at about eight years old, Paul began playing the harmonica. After an attempt at learning the piano, he began to play the guitar.

It was during this time that he invented a neck-worn harmonica holder, which allowed him to play both sides of the harmonica hands-free while accompanying himself on the guitar.

Other people had racks that held harmonicas, but their harmonicas had to stay in one position. Paul wanted access to both sides of his harmonica without having to stop playing his guitar.

His older brother, Ralph, worked at Waukesha’s Bell View Dye Works, Dry Cleaning and Pressing. “There always were plenty of wire coat hangers in the house,” Paul recalled.

Using wire coat hangers, Paul experimented to get the rack to stay in place as he played. He added wood slats to the back and front to stabilize the rack.

In his autobiography, Paul explained: "There were harmonica holders being made commercially then, but they couldn't change keys. You clamped the harmonica into them and you couldn't change keys unless you took one harmonica out and put another one in. That wasn't going to work for me because by now I had a good German harmonica that played on both sides.

“So I made my own harmonica holder out of coat hanger wire and wood, and mounted my harmonica on pivot points so I could flip it over with my chin. On one side, if you blow, you're in C; if you draw, you're in G. On the other side, you blow in D, and draw in A. So that gave me four different keys I could play in with just one harmonica, by flipping it over when I needed to. That buffaloed everybody, and it was a lot of fun."

Paul patented his invention. Harmonica holders use his basic design to this day. By 14, Paul, who then called himself, Red Hot Red, used his harmonica rack regularly.

After Paul's death, in an estate sale, that original harmonica holder was auctioned to the higher bidder. The original estimate was about $1,500. The winning bid was $59,375!