Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the opening of the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair. It's starting to sink in what a MAJOR time this was in America. Think about it – in November of '63, Kennedy was assassinated, in the new year, The Beatles arrived and played Ed Sullivan and then the third major world's fair was held in New York City two months later. The fair’s theme was “Peace Through Understanding”, dedicated to “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe” as was symbolized by a 12-story high, stainless-steel model of the earth called the Unisphere, which stands to this day. The fair ran for two six-month seasons, April 22 – October 18, 1964 and April 21 – October 17, 1965 and the admission price for adults was $2 in 1964 – about $15 in 2013 dollars, so it was relatively cheap. Maybe that’s why more than 51 million people attended. The fair is best remembered as a showcase of mid-20th-century American culture and technology – the Space Age, with its vista of promise. The fair also symbolized a giant consumer show that featured many products produced in this country for transportation, living, and consumer electronic needs. Most American companies from pen makers to auto companies had a major presence. It gave attendees their first interaction with computer equipment and many companies demonstrated the use of mainframe computers, terminals with keyboards and CRT displays, Teletype machines, punch cards, and telephone modems in an era when computer equipment was kept in back offices away from the public, decades before the Internet and home computers were at everyone’s disposal. Hard to imagine today but I wish we still had World’s Fairs in this country – we could start by restoring what’s left of the ’64 World’s Fair – take a look at how exciting it must have seemed.