EDGEWATER, Maryland — Visitors to the General Motors Futurama pavilion at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 saw something quite amazing for its time: an automated highway system. It was a dazzling display of thousands of cars and trucks operating without driver assistance for maximum traffic flow and efficiency.
The GM Futurama program was the work of famed industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, who many credited with conceiving what became the first modern interstate highway system.
Today, Bel Geddes, who died in 1958, is being given even more credit: for introducing a whole new world of automated transportation.
