poised to take off, soar over the nearby Pool of Industry, and perhaps buzz the hapless New York Mets baseball team playing at nearby Shea Stadium. Altogether, the building required 7,250 cubic yards of concrete, 900 tons of reinforcing steel, 3,000 tons of structural steel, and 450 plastic rein- forced fiberglass panels. Most of the floating wing's 41,000 square feet of useable space was con- sumed by a nonthrill ride that people waited as long as several hours to expe- INTRODUCTION Figure Intro.-1 The Bell System Pavilion, AT&T's showplace at the New York World's Fair in 1964. rience. As visitors sat in "floating armchairs," a conveyor belt tugged them along at a pace of 70 feet per minute past animated exhibits tracing the history of communications (including, naturally, Dr. Bell and Mr. Watson). Beneath the floating wing, AT&T constructed a 40,000-square-foot exhibit hall that housed technology displays, live demonstrations, and even audience partici- pation games. A 140-foot tower in front of the pavilion (the only possible obstruction to a smooth take-off) held a one-ton microwave horn antenna that was designed to relay video from the fair to a receiver located on top of Manhattan's Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building). The Bell System Pavilion didn't last long. In its predivestiture heyday, AT&T and its financial might could afford to have the massive structure demolished shortly after the fair's end. In all, the pavilion was open to the public for less than two years, from April through October in both 1964 and 1965. INFORMATION PORTAL By plan, the Bell System Pavilion was designed to serve as an information portal to the Third Great Telecom Revolution. (The first two telecom revolu- tions were launched in the mid- and late-19th century by the creation of, respectively, the global telegraph and telephone networks.) The exhibits included a full-scale replica of the first Telstar communications satellite, a INTRODUCTION presentation on microwave links, a selection of stylish new desktop Touch Tone tel