1964 New York World Fair visions of the future have some hits, and misses
However, there were others that were pretty much right on the button
Video phone calls? We do that. Asking computers for information? Sure, several times a day. Colonies on the moon and jet packs as everyday transport. Maybe not.
The New York World's Fair of 1964 introduced 51 million visitors to a range of innovations and predictions, some that were right on the money and others that, perhaps thankfully, were way off the mark.
At the Bell System pavilion, engineers touted a "picturephone" that allowed callers to see who they were talking to, a concept that lives on in some modern-day apps such as Skype and FaceTime.
At the time, though, picture phones didn't take off, said Lori Walters, history professor at the University of Central Florida. She attributed that to high set-up costs that made them accessible to relatively few.
And at a time when many men attended the fair in coat and tie and women in dresses, people weren't quite ready to be seen on the phone at any hour in any attire.