A Trip to the Seattle World's Fair in "Century 21 Calling"

Calling all retro-futurism buffs! For your viewing pleasure, here's the full video of Century 21 Calling, the 1962 AT&T promotional film mentioned at the top of this week's episode, Monorails: Trains of Tomorrow?

The film was made for AT&T by Jerry Fairbanks Productions. (Fairbanks was a veteran Hollywood producer who invented of the Multi Cam sound synchronization system still used today to film TV sitcoms.)

The film follows an impossibly effervescent teenage couple as they ride the monorail to the 1962 Seattle World's Fair—also known as the Century 21 Exposition—and then spend some time at the Bell Systems pavilion learning about cutting-edge telephone technologies like pagers and call waiting.

The film has historical charm. But I fastened on it for this episode of the podcast because of the way the "reveal" in the opening sequence recreates the experience of actual fair-goers, eight million of whom arrived at the exposition on the monorail.

For a good laugh, check out the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of the film, with all the trademark MST3K snark.