ORLANDO, Oct. 8, 2009 -- From the engineering marvel of the Unisphere to the struggle over civil rights, University of Central Florida researchers are recreating the sights, sounds and sensations of the 1964-65 New York Worlds Fair.

The computer simulation project will give students and history and technology buffs a free virtual ticket to a historic event that provided a first look at todays technology. Visitors were told, for example, that the handful of satellites then circling the planet would one day revolutionize weather forecasting and that small satellite dishes would become a household fixture.

Worlds Fairs were calling cards to the future, said project leader Lori Walters, a historian and researcher with UCFs Media Convergence Lab.  We need to have kids understand that the roots of what they have today can be traced back to that fair, she said.

The National Science Foundation is providing up to $1.4 million for the project, titled Interconnections:  Revisiting the Future, largely because of its potential for using technology to deliver significant science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) content to underrepresented populations.  Because Queens was named the most ethnically diverse county in the country in the 2000 U.S. Census, the fair, which was held in that New York suburb, seemed a natural fit.

Walters selected the 1964-65 Worlds Fair for many reasons, including her memories of visiting Queens as a child and seeing the relics of the fair while visiting her aunt. She was mesmerized by the sight of the sun glinting off the enormous steel Unisphere - a 700,000 pound globe balanced on a tripod base.  The Unisphere became the global symbol of the fair and its theme Peace Through Understanding.

I realized that fair represented the hub of everything that occurred in the 60s, Walters said. 
In 2007, Walters received a $30,000 grant from National Endowment for the Humanities to recreate one of the fairs themed zones - transportation.

Charlie Hughes, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Media Convergence Lab at UCFs Institute for Simulation and Training, and Eileen Smith, the labs associate director and experiential learning researcher, worked with Walters to collect historical data. 

Using thousands of photographs supplied by Worlds Fair enthusiasts and others purchased on eBay, they carefully scanned and documented in precise detail every dimension of the displays and then called upon the memories of historians and attendees to ensure authenticity of the virtual environment they created.

The NSF grant, received in partnership with the Queens Museum of Art and the New York Hall of Science, will allow them to expand the original project to include all of the fairs more than 140 pavilions. 

Participants will be able to view movies, photos and documents at each venue. In addition, Hughes, Smith and the media team are building virtual experiments, where visitors can watch and conduct research, such as creating nylon fibers or building a heat-resistant material for a space capsule heat shield. 

The project will also capture the history of the time, including the civil rights protests that took place at the fairs opening. 

The fair represents a point of time - 1964 and 1965, Smith said.  What we want to do is get people immersed in that time, see what came of the future as predicted 44 years ago and inspire students to use that as a stepping-off point to look at the next 40 years.    

Walters, who had earlier worked with researchers at UCFs Media Convergence Lab on a virtual re-creation of Cape Canaverals Launch Complex 14, the site of John Glenns historic launch, was passionate about using similar techniques on a larger scale.

We had proven that the concept works - and we wanted to expand to a topic that would allow total immersion in a historical period, she said. 

Hughes said that one of the greatest challenges with the project, pieces of which will be offered for free on the internet beginning this fall, is capturing the historical perspective in a format that can compete with the best the commercial world can offer.

You can have great content, but if no one cares to interact with it, or if youre not competitive with the game world, then people are going to walk away from it, he said.

Walters and her team are accepting submissions of photos, documents or any other information pertaining to the fair.  For more information about the project and how to contribute, go to  http://mcl.ucf.edu/nywf/ .

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