Thinking Small (5 page)

By the time of the World’s Fair, the United States was pulling itself out of the Depression, and it already had quite a history of trying to bring electricity to its population. It had been nearly 200 years since Ben Franklin had flown his kites and made his notes about charges and sparks. And Thomas Edison, having demonstrated the first incandescent lightbulb only three years after Ferdinand Porsche was born, had since developed the first electrical lighting
system with a common generator that allowed lines to be connected to various homes. By 1882, Edison had acquired his first 50 customers toward what, just over half a century later, was one of the main staples of the growing free market: the business of energy and light. It was a slow process: In 1935, nine out of ten farms still did not have electricity in many American states, but the market for it, alongside a desire for it, were taking off. A new technological world was arriving,
and it would bring with it a seemingly endless amount of bewildering
new choices: Old problems were being solved, but new ones were being created.

For Americans emerging from the 1930s, this change in economic and social perspective, the idea of looking toward the future, was not yet understood so much as felt: it had an emotional resonance. For the first time, 44 million people from all over the globe could travel to Flushing Meadows to intermingle at the biggest World’s Fair in American history. They could hear a speech on cosmic rays given by Albert Einstein, listen to President Roosevelt talk about new
technologies, stand in front of a Vermeer painting that had been shipped all the way from Amsterdam, see a streamlined pencil sharpener, or touch a new fabric called nylon. They could gaze at color photography—the first splashes of reds and greens ever reproduced—or be introduced to the possibility of controlling temperature through something called “air-conditioning.” Each evening, crowds could also bask in the glow of fluorescent lights, as, for the
first time, the exhibits and buildings were draped in them. People called it “otherworldly” and “magical.” They let themselves get carried away; many were hungry to feel optimistic again, to come together and share the warm expectation that tomorrow would be better than today.

In the swarmed Transportation Zone of the fair, people could enter the General Motors Futurama exhibit, a 36,000-square-foot miniworld complete with thousands of tiny cars, highways, and homes that presented itself as a visualization of what the country was soon to become, like looking at the world through the window of a time machine. This was truly an original vision at the time, as much of America was still rural and blanketed in farms and fields. According to Dan
Howland, the editor of the
Journal of Ride Theory, “
the audience had never even considered a future like this.… There wasn’t an interstate freeway system in 1939. Not many people owned a car.”
²

In some ways, the 1939 World’s Fair echoed the ceremony that had taken place just a year earlier in The Town of the Strength through Joy Car, when Adolf Hitler had christened his
“modern workers’ city” and spoke of motorizing the population; Futurama reflected that same vision Hitler had of providing Germany with its first network of autobahns. In other words, the powerful elite of both Germany and America now believed that
the future would be built around the automobile, and they were working toward that future in a very significant way. The difference in Hitler’s vision and the version presented by General Motors, however, was bound up in the very idea vaunted by the lightbulb ad: the importance of free enterprise. The push and pull between markets and governments around the world was entering a new phase, and the question of which economic and political path was best was still a matter of
debate. In America,
President Roosevelt’s New Deal had momentarily shifted economic power toward governmental control in an attempt to alleviate the Depression, beginning public projects to employ people and bring back a spirit of enterprise. It was working, but it had come with a great deal of controversy and debate. New Deal projects that supplied electricity or infrastructures made private companies feel as if the government was imposing on their domain,
but in the eyes of Roosevelt and his administration, those projects were a way of providing work and money to the people, and of lifting them out of the Depression. American businessmen were quick to challenge governmental interference in the market, however, engaging in a frustrating deliberation that would nevertheless ultimately prove to be for the country’s good. Hitler’s People’s Car and People’s City was an answer to those same dire economic times,
after all, but rather than deal with the inherent tensions of a democratic system, his party blamed democracy itself: Business and the economy could not be trusted to the masses, Hitler said, but needed to be funneled through one ultimate point of control.

Taken together, these two urges—one toward centralization of power, the other toward a responsible diffusion of power—were to shape the events of the next two decades in profound and deeply transformative ways: Along with their new political and economic realities, the United States and Europe would enter into a race to develop new technology, a debate about free and managed markets, and a search for the balance between two seemingly contradictory human
desires: to have both freedom and control at once. “The eyes of the Fair are on the future,”
³
the official pamphlet for the World’s Fair read, promising that the best preparation for tomorrow is “familiarity with today.” And it was true: If one looked closely, the next five years were already implicit. The Second World War, less than a year
away for most of the countries participating in the Fair, would soon prove the importance of technology and communication in an increasingly interconnected world. The United Nations would be created. International borders would be redrawn. Great amounts of money
and research would be placed into weaponry and transportation. Mass production would arrive on a scale as yet unseen. Ballistics and code breaking would jump-start the development of electronic computer
technology. And most unforgettable of all, endeavors like the Manhattan Project would put the peril of nuclear weapons into worldwide collective consciousness, contributing to the iron curtain that was soon to fall. By the close of the 1940s, technological innovation would be associated with a new urgency, one that demanded a new kind of clarity and care.

In 1933, in London’s
Daily Mail,
the 3rd Viscount Rothermere of Britain had written that
it was “Germany’s great good fortune to have found a leader who can combine for the public good all the most vigorous elements in the country,”
⁴
and by “vigorous elements,” he’d meant German spirit, ingenuity, and a
reverence for authority and work. There had been words of praise for Adolf Hitler from many other countries as well. But by 1939, all were trying to take those words back. The same people who had earlier sung the praises of the German chancellor and the remarkable growth he was bringing to his country were now walking along the Futurama’s moving sidewalks wondering how much longer it would be before their countries were at war. And, as evidenced by Albert Einstein’s
presence in America (he had fled Germany earlier that year) and his speech on the Fair’s opening day, a new kind of refugee was becoming part of America’s cultural and intellectual elite, men and women coming over in an attempt to escape Hitler and his racism and vitriol. The World’s Fair and its emphasis on an international future was a harbinger of the mixed social and economic world that would soon emerge. And so was Germany’s conspicuous absence from
the party. Hitler had refused to allow Germans to attend.

After that tense episode
of Anton Porsche finding out about his son’s secret lab in 1889, Ferdinand had not abandoned his electrical experiments. But something had shifted between them: Both father and son seemed to have realized that the situation was not going to change; they had to accept it, like it or not. Another son had been born to the Porsches, and was coming of age by then, and the younger boy was
more excited about following his father’s path than was the teenage Ferdinand, so his father began looking toward him to take up the family trade. Ferdinand’s mother, Anna, continued to speak to Anton in quiet moments, wondering if perhaps Ferdinand really did have some kind of gift, wondering if perhaps they needed to allow him to explore it. Eventually Anton stopped bothering his son so much about what he did in his free time, just as long as he kept up with his
work.

One night, walking back from a political meeting in town that had followed a long day in the shop, Anton received an enormous shock. Perhaps he even stopped and shook his head, wondering if he’d already walked home, if he’d fallen asleep and was stumbling through a dream. The trees and grass stretched out in front of him along the path to the house had a strange glow, a reflected brightness that grew stronger with each step. The house itself seemed to have
been filled with some kind of luminous liquid that was now dripping out of the windows and doors. Anton could see the profiles of his wife and children, shadows on the wall. His son had succeeded in his experiments: Anton was now the only man in the entire town whose house and workshop were lit with electric light.

It had not been easy to keep the surprise from his father, but Ferdinand had waited until everything was working properly before he’d taken it downstairs and put it in place, unveiling it that night for his brother and sisters and mother, knowing his
father was on his way home. He’d built the entire system, including the generator, from scratch, with the help of nothing more than a curious mind, the knowledge that comes from trial and
error, and whatever intuition had been gifted to him from who knows where. It was astounding, not only to his family but also to the town. Anton told his son that he could attend night classes at the local technical school, if he wished. Ferdinand was thrilled.

As Ferdinand got older, however, he began to wonder about bigger things, about Vienna and the innovations being undertaken there. His classes at the village school were not quite able to satisfy his curiosity. In fact, sometimes he learned just as much by studying the work being done at Ginzkey’s
¹
carpet factory, the place where he’d had his first
encounter with electric light. Ginzkey’s business had become an impressive and thriving
industry by then, and his influence in the area around Maffersdorf was considerable. Anton Porsche respected Mr. Ginzkey immensely and listened to him when he spoke about the prospects he saw for Ferdinand. It was perhaps time to send him to Vienna, Ginzkey said. Anton agreed, and thus when Ferdinand Porsche turned eighteen, he was allowed to leave Maffersdorf and go to
the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s thriving capital.