Check out these recently scanned and digitalized photos from the 1933 Worlds Fair in Chicago

link to photos: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/history/-1,051108worldsfairg.photogallery?index=8

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/943068,CST-NWS-fair11.article

Flashback: 1933 World's Fair

1933 WORLD'S FAIR | Chicago History Museum is giving new life online to photographer's images of Century of Progress

May 11, 2008

BY ANDREW HERRMANN Staff Reporter aherrmann@suntimes.com

Ken Hedrich peered through his camera 75 years ago and captured the images of his age.

Now, those photographs of the Century of Progress Exposition -- the World's Fair that opened on Chicago's lakefront in 1933 -- are being readied for a new life on the Internet. More than 200 photos have been scanned and digitalized in preparation for posting later this year by the Chicago History Museum.

Though the images are decades old, "they look so fresh and sharp," museum technician Nicole Tevo says, thanks to preservation done by the firm the photographer helped found, Chicago-based Hedrich Blessing.

Also, the negatives, some of them on highly flammable nitrate, are a relatively enormous eight inches by 10 inches. Such size allows crystal-clear shots of the fair -- a clarity that has turned up some surprises, like a person's shadow in the roofline of the fair's Ford Building. "It's a treat to find those things,'' said Tevo.

The fair itself, which opened May 27, 1933, was a treat for a Depression-weary Chicago. Encompassing the area roughly between the Shedd Aquarium and where McCormick Place now squats, with Northerly Island as the focus, the fair ran for two seasons, in 1933 and 1934. Attracting 48 million visitors (at 50 cents admission), it was staged to mark Chicago's centennial and the scientific and technological advancements America had made over the previous 100 years.

The aim, as one official said at the time, was to "educate you so painlessly you will not realize you're being educated.''

I recently checked out a book about the architecture of the '33 Worlds fair. There are some great pictures. So glad CHM is going to provide more.