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]
