In 1909, a thirteen-year-old Al Rochester was hired to slice bread at the concession stand of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle. He was also given a pass for the entire four-plus months of the fair and became a regular attendee as a result. Rochester was later elected a city councilman, and in January 1955 – with the fiftieth anniversary of the A-Y-P fast approaching – suggested holding a new fair in Seattle to commemorate the first one. Within a matter of weeks, the Seattle City Council petitioned the state of Washington, which approved an initial five thousand dollars for a commission to investigate the feasibility of the proposal.
Around that same time, another commission was looking into developing a civic center in Seattle. “Seattle’s community facilities for sports, cultural activities, convention and public administration functions are most inadequate,” Mayor Allan Pomeroy said in 1954. “The founders and early settlers of Seattle moved entire hills to make a city. Certainly we can solve the financial and organizational problems which a civic center would entail.” It wasn’t long before the two projects became intertwined – instead of building temporary structures as was the norm for a world’s fair, the buildings would be permanent and become part of the desired civic center after the fair concluded.
There was an additional change to Al Rochester’s initial proposal, one which likewise altered the original concept. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched the first artificial satellite into orbit. The beachball-sized Sputnik was visible at sunrise and sunset with binoculars, while its steady “beep beep beep” was picked up by amateur radio operators each time the craft passed overhead. More significantly, Sputnik announced the start of a Space Race between the Soviets and the United States, with the U.S. already lagging far behind.
“For the first time, our country is losing a scientific and engineering race which we are determined to win,” Washington Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson said after the satellite’s launch. Sensing a shift in American focus, the organizers of the Seattle World’s Fair – which was being touted as a “Festival of the West” at that point – decided to also shift focus by emphasizing science, space, and the technological future on the horizon.
This new emphasis was not lost on Congress, which quickly approved an initial $125,000 to the organizing committee, an amount that mushroomed to $12.5 million by the time the fair took place. A significant part of those funds was used to build a United States Science Pavilion, which became the Pacific Science Center after the fair ended.
In the spring of 1959, fair chairman Eddie Carlson visited Stuttgart, Germany, and saw firsthand the recently constructed Fernsehturm Stuttgart, a seven-hundred-foot-tall television tower with a restaurant on top. Realizing how cities like New York and Paris – with their Empire State Building and Eiffel Tower – had structures that became synonymous with the cities themselves, Carlson decided a similar structure should be built in Seattle for the World’s Fair. When King County refused to fund the project, a private company was formed to construct what became known as the Space Needle.
Von Roll Iron Works in Switzerland, meanwhile, had previously built “sky rides” for the Brussels World’s Fair and Disneyland. They were thus contracted to design a sky ride in Seattle that could transport 800 people an hour over the fairgrounds in sixty two-person cars. Alweg Rapid Transit Systems of Sweden was likewise hired to build a futuristic form of transportation, a monorail that connected the Exposition with the Westlake Mall in downtown Seattle.
The next coup was orchestrated by Washington Senators Warren Magnuson and Scoop Jackson, who convinced James Webb, administrator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to have NASA participate in the Seattle World’s Fair. As a result, NASA became the second largest exhibitor, with 19,600 square feet of space. The Second National Conference on Peaceful Uses of Space was even held during the fair, with both Webb and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun taking part in the proceedings.
Also attending was Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, the second human to orbit the Earth. After visiting the United States Science Pavilion, Titov stirred controversy when he remarked, “Sometimes people are saying that God is out there. I was looking around attentively all day but I didn’t find anybody there. I saw neither angels nor God.” A few days later, astronaut John Glenn – the first American to orbit the Earth – likewise paid a visit to the Seattle World’s Fair, and even rode the Monorail with lead rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. He countered Titov’s remark by saying, “The God I pray to is not small enough that I expect to see him in outer space.”
In 1909, President William Taft officially opened the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition by sending a telegraph message from the White House to the fairgrounds in Seattle. President John F. Kennedy duplicated that feat on April 21, 1962, albeit using a telephone instead of the telegraph.
“I am honored to open Seattle’s world fair today,” he told the crowd assembled inside Memorial Stadium over the loudspeakers. “What we show was achieved with great effort in the fields of science, technology and industry. These accomplishments are a bridge to carry us competently toward the twenty-first century. Many nations have sent exhibits and will send their people. We welcome them. This exemplifies the spirit of peace and cooperation with which we approach the decades ahead.”
One of the most popular attractions at the Seattle World’s Fair was the World of Tomorrow. Visitors entered the exhibit via a large, bubble-shaped hydraulic elevator with transparent acrylic glass walls called the Bubbleator that ascended into a floating structure of cubes bathed in light. A forty second introduction film opened with a family hiding in a fallout shelter before transforming into a series of flashing images from throughout humanity’s history – from the Acropolis in Ancient Greece to the contemporary Marilyn Monroe.
The cubes then displayed a “World of Tomorrow” filled with jetports, automated factories, and futuristic office designs. The exhibit ended with another shot of the fallout shelter as words from President Kennedy’s inaugural address – calling on Americans to build a world free from the threat of nuclear war – echoed through the room.
Kennedy was scheduled to close the Seattle World’s Fair in person on October 21, 1962, but organizers were told at the last minute that he would be unable to attend due to a cold. The following evening, the President delivered a nationally televised address that revealed the presence of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, as well as the United States’ intention on having them removed, peacefully if possible but with military action if necessary. The optimism of the Seattle World’s Fair had suddenly been eclipsed by the possibility of nuclear war – in the end, however, the World of Tomorrow proved to be prophetic after all.
Anthony Letizia