NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: We all feel the weight
of the shadows on our future.
But in another time, every bit as ominous as our own,
there were those who could see a way through the darkness
to find a star to steer by.
Carl Sagan wrote, “I was a child in a time of hope.
I wanted to be a scientist from my earliest school days.
The crystallizing moment came when I first caught on
that the stars are mighty suns, when it first dawned on me how
staggeringly far away they must be to appear as mere points
of light in the sky.
I’m not sure I even knew the meaning of the word ‘science’
then, but I wanted somehow to immerse
myself in all that grandeur.
I was gripped by the splendor of the universe, transfixed
by the prospect of understanding how things really work,
of helping to uncover deep mysteries,
of exploring new worlds, maybe even literally.
It has been my good fortune to have had that dream in part
fulfilled.
For me, the romance of science remains
as appealing and new as it was on that day
when I was shown the wonders of the 1939
New York World’s Fair.”
[fireworks bursting]
This is where the future became a place.
But how could there be hope in 1939?
The angriest voices had taken the world stage, preaching
hatred and tribal division.
The most cataclysmic war in history,
which would take the lives of 16 million human beings,
was only just beginning.
Yet even as darkness descended, it
was possible to awaken the young Carl
Sagan and his contemporaries with a thrilling vision
of the future one that was powerful enough to inspire many
of them to do the years of hard work required to become
scientists and engineers.
The miracle of television became a reality to the public
at the 1939 World’s Fair.
We had learned to manipulate electrons
into what would become a civilization-altering force.
This working model of a TV set was transparent to convince
the skeptics that what they were seeing
was not just motion-picture images.
The images on the television screen
were actually live signals from across time and space.
A possible world of high technology
was first glimpsed here.
[emotive string music]
