Mr Grosvenor, you and your wife visited my father, Stan Watkins, in his office at the NY Worlds’ Fair in 1939. I’d like to ask you some questions about your visit.
What did you talk about? Did you try out all the exhibits in the AT&T building? Did you have a winning number in the lottery which let you make a free phone call? Did you ask the Voder questions? I wonder if it could say “National Geographic Magazine” or “Welcome Mr Gilbert Grosvenor.”
I have a photograph of you three together. But I never asked my father what you talked about, or what he showed you of the exhibit he managed. If he had a Voder in his office, he could have showed you how it worked.
And did you ever have an article about the Voder in your magazine? I have boxes of them from 1926, so perhaps I should get out the 1939/40 ones and have a look. Google hasn’t come up with anything.
Or maybe I can find details of your trip to NYC and the 1939 Worlds’ Fair in the National Geographic Archives. Put that trip on my itinerary; you haven’t answered my questions, so I’ll have to come and see for myself.
Talking Pictures, a Sound Decision 
Hi Barb. I wanted to let you know that I have an old set of National Geographics on CDs. They range from the beginning to end of 1999. I did a search on “Stan Watkins” and another on “Voder” and came up empty. Perhaps Grosvenor didn’t feature the Voder or your dad in the magazine. Or perhaps this ancient set of CDs doesn’t have a very good search function.
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Lucky you to have the NG on CDs; I have boxes and boxes of them from 1921 (some) to mostly complete years from 1926 through sometime in the 1970s, I think. They are in my house in London, so I can’t check them out. I am hoping I might find something in the NG archives about the AT&T visit in 1939. Thank so much for looking. I hope it was fun and you didn’t get too side-tracked. xx
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I did get sidetracked, but I do love looking at the old National Geos.
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I was excited once when in my teens to find an advert for the summer camp we went to in 1945: Meadowlark, in Monterrey, Mass. It was run by friends of the family. My sisters and I went this one time which puzzled me – summer camp is such an American tradition – but I finally figured out that was the year we moved house and my brother was born. Nuff said!
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