Pages from history
see, among other exhibits, the steam-
powered generators which supplied
electricity for all the pavilions;
and Thomas Edison’s “moving
boardwalk”.
It was there that inventor Rudolf
Diesel first demonstrated his
seemingly unassuming eponymous
machine (then running on peanut
oil) that was to change the world:
by 1939, a quarter of global sea
trade was fuelled by diesel power.
Diesel himself was not destined to
see his machine’s triumph, having
mysteriously vanished from a cross-
Channel ship as he was heading to a
meeting in London in 1913.
But I digress.
Back in 1900, long queues gathered
at the entrance to the Palace of Optics,
with the Great Paris Telescope – then
the world’s largest – inside. It could
54
Issue 2 2020
Above: The
Pavilions of
the Nations,
III, Exposition
Universal, Library
of Congress’s Prints
and Photographs
division
Below: Paris
Exposition: Palace
of Optics, Paris,
France, 1900.
Brooklyn Museum
Archives
Right: View of the
Pont Alexandre
III toward Les
Invalides, Brown
University Library
enlarge the image of the moon 10,000
times, and the visitors to the pavilion
(two thousand at a time) could see it
on a 144sqm screen.
Altogether, 21 of the 33 official
pavilions were set aside for science
and technology.
On top of the ‘official’ pavilions,
the Universal Exhibition hosted 40
national ones. Those were temporary
and, unlike the former, mostly
designed in the Belle Epoch and
Art Nouveaux styles, reflected the
architecture of the exhibiting country.
The Russian pavilion, for example
was modelled on the outlines of the
Moscow Kremlin, the USA’s on the
Capitol Building, and the British
(designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens)
resembled a Jacobean mansion.
Buddhist-temple-like Chinese and
Japanese pavilions were, reportedly,
so beautiful that they were both
purchased afterwards by the King of
Belgium and transferred to Brussels.
A separate stretch of the Universal
Exhibition’s territory was reserved
for the so-called Colonial Pavilions,
representing French, Dutch and
Russian colonies and dependencies in
Africa and Asia.
Neither a country nor even a
dependency, the up-and-coming
sculptor August Rodin had his
own pavilion, in which his famous
composition The Gates of Hell was
first displayed, alongside his other
sculptures.
One exhibit – part of the
Agriculture Pavilion – capable of
vying in popularity with the Palace
of Optics was, for reasons that do
not need explaining, the Champagne
Palace, where free samples of French
champagne were on offer.
Like all great history-making
exhibitions, the 1900 ‘Exposition’
was accompanied by some truly
momentous events: the showing of
the first-ever motion pictures; the
opening of the Paris Metro, with its
distinctive Art Nouveau entryways;
and the 1900 Paris Olympic Games –
the first ever held outside Greece.
Among the less momentous events
was the first (and so far the last)
gathering, at which the mayors of
all French cities, villages and towns
– 20,777 in total – sat down together
for an unhurried meal in the tents
erected in the Tuileries Gardens. The
other noteworthy (for some) occasion
was the awarding of a gold medal for
excellence to one of the American
exhibits - Campbell’s Soup. This
medal still features on some of the
company’s soup labels.
It is always with regret that I close
the 1900 Paris Exhibition Guide Book.
Despite all the gruesome events that
followed, most of the inventions and
ideals it introduced have survived
intact.
Wars, revolutions and natural
disasters aside, the fact remains: the
modern world wouldn’t have been
quite the same without it.
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk