Companies had a chance to shine — and even glow
It was a great big beautiful tomorrow in 1915, and somebody at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition wanted to sell it to you.
General Electric wanted to hook fairgoers on this wonderful thing called a toaster that could, without an open flame of any kind, produce toast. Heinz wanted to enthrall attendees with the miracle of canned peaches that had no bits of solder inside.
The phone company wanted to remind fairgoers that its new transcontinental lines were open for business and that, for the equivalent of $500 in today’s funds, anybody could place a threeminute call to New York, assuming he had that much to say.
And the mining industry desired to show off a great new glowing, all-powerful substance called radium, and did. Tens of thousands of fairgoers descended into a fake mine and stared at specks of radium through microscopes.
Radium turned out to be good for nothing, except for making your watch dial glow in the dark, and for causing anemia and cancer. But there was so much to do at the fair that no one stuck around the radium exhibit long enough to come down with anything.
Much of the marketing took place in the commercial exhibits sponsored by giant corporations. Perhaps the most aggressive was General Electric, which built a model house and stuffed it full of miracle appliances that hardly anyone in 1915 had heard of.
Some of the miracles, like the toaster, are still in general use. Other miracles, such as the electric player piano, are still in general use in museums. Then there is the electric fireplace, which never caught on because a fire is not supposed to be electric, and — at other exhibits — the electric butter churn and the electric cream separator, whose times have come and gone, and the electric cow milker, which is useful if your home comes with a cow.
“Corporate marketing,” said fair historian Laura Ackley, “was alive and well. The fair was the university of the world and the shop window of civilization.”
World’s fairs and modern amusement parks have always had corporate sponsors presenting elaborate commercials in the form of entertainment. At more recent world’s fairs, exhibit halls were built and named by their corporate sponsors and not held in nondenominational “palaces” as they were in 1915.
Visitors to the 1964-65 world’s fair, and later to Disneyland, remember the GE Carousel of Progress — the theater-in-the-round update of General Electric’s 1915 paean to toasters, as well as countless rides and attractions sponsored by big-name conglomerates.
In 1915, the hottest newfangled technology was that miracle called the airplane, invented only 13 years earlier. The fair featured a handful
of stunt pilots putting on air shows, but for those of means, there was nothing to match an actual 10-minute plane ride. For $10 — a formidable sum in 1915 — fairgoers took off from the bay two at a time in a homemade seaplane and circled the bay and the Marin County coast.
Before clambering aboard, passengers had to sign a waiver agreeing that, were they to die, it was tough luck. No refunds. But hundreds of fairgoers took the flights without incident.
Even newer than the airplane was the transcontinental phone line, which had been completed only the year before. Thousands of fairgoers jammed the AT&T theater, picked up earpieces wired to their auditorium seats and listened enthralled while a young man in New York read the headlines, described the weather and played a phonograph record.
Fifty years later, the phone company would stage a similar exhibit at the New York World’s Fair, touting its latest invention — the picture phone. The public responded in a similar way. Few could afford a long-distance call in 1915, and even fewer wanted a picture phone in 1965.
The technology of the tin can was just as exciting in 1915 and much more affordable. Food safety was all the rage in 1915, and nothing was worse than opening a tin can that had been soldered shut and finding bits of solder inside. Making its debut at the 1915 fair was the miracle canning machine, which crimped shut the lids instead of soldering them. With no more bits of toxic metal inside, a can of peaches suddenly contained nothing but peaches. To most fairgoers, that breakthrough was a lot more important than calling New York.
Perhaps no exhibit captured the uncharted brave world of tomorrow like the fake mine. Fairgoers rode an ersatz mine elevator (it vibrated but didn’t go anywhere) and entered a simulated mine, where they were invited to view through a microscope the miraculous, glowing stuff known as radium. Fairgoers were told radium’s limitless energy would power the future.
But after radium turned out to be too hazardous even for glow-in-the-dark watches, it went the way of the picture phone and the electric fireplace. The future did turn out to be glowing, in other ways.