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]