The 1964 New York World's Fair at Night
I was a teenager at the time, and somehow had managed to buy a used Miranda
DR single lens reflex camera with a fast lens, f1.8 as I recall. On top
of that, Kodak had recently introduced it's High Speed Ektachrome film
with a rating of 160. This was enough to set off at night without a tripod,
resulting in some slightly blurry images. Click on any of the images on
this page to see larger, 480 x 640 versions.
The towers with the disks came to be associated with the Fair nearly as
closely as the official symbol, the Unisphere. A street lined with
flags led to the Unisphere.
The
scale of the Unisphere can be judged by the dark outlines of the people
against the fountains at the base. The Unisphere remains in the park in
Flushing.
I doubt if the 64 Fair invented the concept of an evening show of lighted
fountains, music, and fireworks, but it introduced it to many, many people.
copyright Roy Latham 1964, 1999