The Pavilion Guide

1 People Wall and the Information Machine

The elevated walkways will lead you to one of 12 rows of seats on the "People Wall." When you are comfortably seated, the entire Wall will rise -- in full view of Fair-goers on the ground. The Wall will carry you up into the huge elevated theater, "The Information Machine," which rises 90 feet above the Fairgrounds. "The Information Machine" is a 15-minute spectacular of sound and sight, coming to you from 15 separate screens.

Your host explains that this is really an information machine -- because it is a way of telling you quickly and vividly all sorts of facts. As the action unfolds, you'll see how the method used today in solving even the most complex problems is essentially the same method we all use daily.

You'll see how a football coach planning a pass play goes through some of the same logical steps as an engineer testing a model of a rocket-plane ... how a hostess planning a dinner party develops a model to solve her problem, just as city planners studying the many facets of a large city develop a model of a much more complex problem for a computer to solve.

Through dramatic examples from the everyday world and the world of science, you'll see how computers are used to solve the most complex problems in much the same way people use simple logical steps to solve ordinary problems.

The show -- produced by Charles and Ray Eames, with story by Glen fleck and musical score by Elmer Bernstein -- is an experience you'll be talking about, and thinking about, for a long time to come.

2 Computer Court

How can a machine translate from one language into another? Watch as a typist feeds complex Russian technical reports into an experimental computer -- and see a simple but understandable translation appear almost immediately on an automatic printer.

Can a computer "read" and "understand" your own handwritten birthdate? Try it -- and take home a souvenir printout of a New York Times news item that appeared on the day you selected. Almost 40,000 headlines from the last 113 years have been stored in the computer's memory ready for instant retrieval.

3 Probability Machine

Watch as thousands of plastic balls cascade down through a 15-foot high pinball maze. Each ball can land in any one of 21 chutes at the bottom of the machine, yet each chute will fill to approximately the same height each time the balls are released. These experiments repeatedly test the Theory of Probability.

4 Scholar's Walk

Want to relax a bit before heading for the Little Theaters? Try the "Scholars Walk" -- a secluded area that will entertain you with fascinating stories about mathematical concepts and the development of computers.

5 Little Theaters

In the center of the garden are animated theaters featuring puppet-like devices that help dispel many mysteries about the world of computers. In one theater, for example, Sherlock Holmes unravels "The Singular Case of the Plural Green Moustache," using the same kind of logic that computers use -- and that you use in solving everyday problems.

6 Typewriter Bar

Just about everyone who visits the IBM Pavilion sooner or later ends up at the circular typewriter bar. Free postcards are provided for anyone who wishes to try an IBM Selectric typewriter, a uniquely different machine that has no moving carriage.

IBM Pavilion as seen from across the Pool of Industry

Source: Presented courtesy Jeff DaSilva © 2007 Jeff DaSilva,

All Rights Reserved

Above the canopy of a forest of steel trees rises the 90-foot high ovoid theatre of the IBM Pavilion at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.