At the time of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, it can be said that a god many conditions that prevailed seem rather odd today. A silver-fox coat at Bonwit Teller for $165, a summer suit at Gimbel’s for eight dollars, a six day cruise to Nassau for fifty-five dollars, only about one American worker in thirty-three paid any income tax at all…
…Cars were in the process of transition from Tin Lizzies to what John Keats was later to call “insolent chariots.” The new Lincoln Zephyr “coupe” had a wonderful new appointment, a convertible top that could be raised or lowered at the touch of a button. The 1940 Oldsmobile, put on the market in the fall of 1939, had as a $57 extra something called a hydraulic clutch, which was an early version of automatic transmission.
—1939 Lincoln Zephyr Goodguys Del Mar —click image for source…
Fluorescent lighting was introduced in 1939, and so were nylon stockings, although the latter were not to be in regular production until a year later. In the field of book publishing the seeds were sown of a revolution that was to have a wide cultural impact when a new firm called Pocket Books began issuing paper-backed reprints of popular titles for twenty-five cents each. It was in 1939 that reports were published in the United States of an Argentinian researcher’s discovery that he could produce cancer in rabbits by painting them with tobacco extracts. But hardly anyone paid the reports any attention.
—The luxurious Boeing B-314 Clipper, with which Pan American Airways inaugurated the first scheduled transatlantic airline service between Europe and America in 1939.
(Source: clipperflyingboats.com)—
At the same time the shrinking of the world by international air travel was just getting underway.In May 1939, the Yankee Clipper, a great four-engine flying boat successfully inaugurated the first regular North Atlantic air service, going from Long Island to Lisbon in twenty-six and a half hours, with a stopover at the Azores. It carried a crew of fourteen and a shipment of mail, but no paying passengers. Passenger service was not long in coming and in matter of weeks led by Pan-Am in a plane whose interior looked like a musty old Pullman car; transatlantic passenger service at $375 one way, came to be considered an almost routine thing. That fall, aviation got a huge boost with the opening of the latest thing in airports, New York City’s LaGuardia Field. ( to be continued)…
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