8 Predictions GM Made for 1960 Back in 1939 (How Close Did It Get?)

At the 1939 New York World's Fair, General Motors unveiled Futurama, a massive motorized diorama predicting what American transportation and cities would look like by 1960. Drawing on GM's official 1940 documentary To New Horizons alongside postwar archives, this episode examines eight bold predictions—from 100-mph superhighways and radio-controlled cars to elevated pedestrian sidewalks, urban renewal expressways, and floating dirigible hangars. We compare each forecast against the landmark Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and postwar engineering reality to reveal which ideas built modern America and which collapsed. In this episode: 0:00 - Intro 1:13 - The 100-MPH Seven-Lane Superhighway 6:07 - Radio-Controlled Automatic Highway Lanes 10:34 - 50-MPH Grade-Separated Highway Interchanges 14:48 - Continuous Tubing in Highway Safety Curbing 19:36 - Displacing Slums with Urban Expressways 24:19 - Elevated Sidewalks and Two-Tier City Streets 29:00 - Quarter-Mile Skyscrapers with Rooftop Landing Decks 33:32 - Circular Airports with Floating Dirigible Hangars 38:00 - Outro Did your family own one of these? Tell us in the comments. More episodes:    / @futurethatwasnt   Archive footage: To New Horizons (General Motors / Jam Handy, 1940) — Futurama exhibit documentary - https://archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940 Highway Hearing (Prelinger Archives / Dow Chemical, 1956) — Federal-Aid Highway Act debates and route bypass - https://archive.org/details/HighwayH1956 Detroit: City on the Move (City of Detroit, 1965) — Urban freeways, Cobo Hall, urban renewal - https://archive.org/details/DetroitC1965 Design for Dreaming (General Motors Motorama, 1956) — GM Firebird II on automated electronic highway - https://archive.org/details/Designfo1956 Arteries of New York City (ERPI Classroom Films, 1941) — Triborough Bridge, tunnels, express parkways - https://archive.org/details/Arteries1941 Photographs and documents: CC BY 2.0: Tino Rossini; Richard from USA; Greg Gjerdingen; Steve Shook from Moscow, Idaho, USA; Jim Winstead Jr; Tony Webster from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States CC BY 3.0: Evp CC BY 4.0: John Malmin, Los Angeles Times; Novoklimov CC BY-SA 2.0: Roger W from Sarasota, Florida, U.S.A; John Atherton CC BY-SA 2.5 au: Bidgee CC BY-SA 3.0: Bidgee; Mike Russell CC BY-SA 4.0: Alex P. Kok; Richard Vandervord; Firefly4342; Timtempleton Titles and links for every photo, and the fact sources, are in the pinned comment. Archive material is shown for commentary, criticism and education. Research, script and editing are original to this channel; narration uses a synthetic voice. #retrotech #vintagetech #techhistory