In innumerable ways automation touches our lives — and reshapes them. Automation is a simple thermostat keeping a house evenly heated; it is also a continental net-work of computers—the background of Bell Telephone's coast-to-coast direct dialing system. Serving to speed work or add to pleasure, automation is a threat as well as a boon. It can both boost production and leave men jobless. Many U.S. factories are already automated. In years to come, ma-chines with electronic intelligence may well be able to staff a corporation from the blue-collar worker to the vice president in charge of marketing. At the Fair, computers and other electronic instruments help visitors find pen pals, pick a restaurant or plan a trip.
AUTOMATED SCHOOLMARM The Autotutor, a U.S. Industries teaching machine. is tried out by visitors to the Hall of Education. It can even teach workers to use other automated machines.
THE BIBLE COMPRESSED Micro-image methods of information storage like those used by National Cash Register put the whole Bible onto a slide that can then be projected and read.
COMPUTER CRIMINOLOGY In a filmed IBM puppet show (right), Sherlock Holmes shows a crowd how a computer would crack a case framing all questions so that yes-or-no replies (an electronic "on" or "off') lead him to the solution.
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