Equitable Life
The story of the nation's and the world's phenomenal population growth and change is depicted in several imposing exhibits. Beneath a giant tabulator which keeps an up-to-the-minute tally of the nation's total population, lights flash on a 45-foot-wide map - the Demograph - to indicate births and deaths as they occur in each state. World population distribution and totals are shown on another map and counter. A two-way grandstand offers a view of the exhibits on one side; the other faces the Pool of Industry with its fountains and nightly displays of fireworks.
Our Changing Population. The Demograph is studded with electronically controlled lights that indicate not only births and deaths but also age and sex distributions, the trend towards metropolitan areas, and rates of future growth in the United States. Hanging above the map is the giant counter, which dramatizes the growth of the total U.S. population - at the rate of one person every 11 seconds - by displaying the current figure in numbers more than six feet high. (NY World's Fair Corporation press photo)
The lighted numbers of the Demograph were a statistical projection of the population - Equitable did not receive instantaneous information on every birth and death in the country as many visitors thought. (CD #18 Set 94 #22)
Equitable had one of the best locations at the Fair, as the Fountain of the Planets was the locale for many of the more popular pavilions. That's IBM on the left, with the Goodyear blimp passing overhead. The ramp crossing the Pool of Industry was used to prepare the nightly fireworks show. (CD #15 Set 75 #9)