The new york world's fair was "the paradox of all paradoxes", Harper's magazine wrote in 1940. "It proved that Man was noble, then it turned right around and proved that Man could also be a simpleton." The "World of Tomorrow", which lasted 18 months in 1939 and 1940, was indeed a wondrous and silly spectacle. Built on a huge rubbish dump in Queens, it sprang from a grand idea. Just when many were hobbled by the Great Depression, the fair envisioned a Utopian, machine-age future that would revive faith in corporations. The biggest exposition ever, it was expected to make a profit.
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