Helen Pitt

speaker
898 appearances 6 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 6 May

Helen Pitt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months
5 · Apr OctJan 26AprJulnow

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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Conversations · The story behind Sydney’s Luna Park and its impact on the city · 17 Apr 2026 podcast
And just when I think back then, that sensation of the wind flying through your hair, then the absolute freedom, you just can't help but laugh.
I mean, Coney Island today is still a time capsule of how it was in 1935 when the park opened.
So is this real walk down memory lane to your own childhood and many, many generations of others?
Chicago's World Fair changed the face of the, well, created the blueprint for the modern day amusement park.
As you said, the idea was to out Eiffel Eiffel and his impermanent Eiffel Tower.
So they built this giant Ferris wheel that was the centrepiece of the world's Columbian Fair in 1893.
Now, it laid the groundwork in many ways.
It created this thing called the Midway Plaisance.
It had
it was Chicago's like
big attempt to show the rest of the world of how big an important city it was.
So the Midway is a term used in every amusement park now.
It's that centre line that goes through all amusement parks.
An esplanade of usually asphalt and fun, sometimes a little bit of vomit occasionally, but certainly wherever you find an amusement park, the workers will call it Midway.
And so that was what began the whole amusement park movement.
Now, 1893, there's this...
a group of people that come to start rides and start entertainment.
And one of them happened to be a young architect by the name of Fred Thompson, who gave up his promising career as an architectural draftsman and an inventor to become the janitor at a ride on the Midway.
And from that, he learned absolutely everything you needed to know about going to fairs.
So he took...
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