Expo 1 French Book Download
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The Exposition Universelle of 1889 (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-smallfont-size:85%.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-smallfont-size:100%French pronunciation: [ɛkspozisjɔ̃ ynivɛʁsɛl]), better known in English as the 1889 Paris Exposition, was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from 5 May to 31 October 1889. It was the fifth of ten major expositions held in the city between 1855 and 1937.[a] It attracted more than thirty-two million visitors. The most famous structure created for the exposition, and still remaining, is the Eiffel Tower.
The exposition was held to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille, which marked the beginning of French Revolution, and was also seen as a way to stimulate the economy and pull France out of an economic recession.[1] The exposition attracted 61,722 official exhibitors, of whom twenty-five thousand were from outside of France.[2]
Admission to the exposition cost forty centimes, at a time when the price of an "economy" plate of meat and vegetables in a Paris cafe was ten centimes. Visitors paid an additional price for several of the exposition's most popular attractions. Climbing the Eiffel Tower cost five Francs; admission to the popular panoramas, theatres and concerts was one franc. Visitors from the French provinces could buy a ticket which included the train fare and entry into the exposition.[2] The total cost of exposition was 41,500,000 francs, while income was 49,500,000 francs. It was the last of the Paris world's fairs to make a profit.[2]
The countries that officially participated in the exposition were Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, the United States, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Hawaii, Honduras, India, Japan, Morocco, Mexico, Monaco, Nicaragua, Norway, Paraguay, Persia, Saint-Martin, El Salvador, Serbia, Siam, the South African Republic, Switzerland, Uruguay and Venezuela. The British dominions of New Zealand and Tasmania also took part.
Because of the theme of the exposition, celebrating the overthrow of the French monarchy, nearly all European countries with monarchies officially boycotted the exposition. The boycotting nations were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia and Sweden.[3]
The exposition occupied two large sites. The main site was on Champs de Mars on the Left Bank, which had been the parade ground of the Ecole Militaire, and had been occupied by the 1878 Universal Exposition. This was the site of the major part of the exposition, including the Eiffel Tower, Palace of Machines, and the Palaces of Fine Arts and Liberal Arts. The exposition extended across the Seine to the right bank, to the Trocadero Palace, which had been built on the heights for the 1878 Exposition. The slope from the Trocadero Palace down to the Seine was filled with terrace, fountains, gardens and horticultural exhibits.
A separate, smaller site was located on the esplanade of Les Invalides, which hosted the pavilions of the French colonies. This section featured a large assortment of outdoor restaurants and cafes with foods from Indochina, North Africa, and other cuisines from around the world. The colonial pavilions conveyed the multiculturalism of France's colonies, the largest of them being the Palais Central des Colonies, designed by Stephen Sauvestre, who notably contributed to the design of the Eiffel Tower.[5] In addition to the architectural displays of France's colonies, the exposition showcased a construction of villages inhabited by natives of the colonies, to be observed by viewers.[6] The colonized people had their daily lives displayed for the exposition visitors, which made some of them uncomfortable.[6] Samba Lawbé Thiam, a jeweler from Senegal who was part of the 1889 Exposition, said the following:
The incorporation of indigenous colonized individuals in the exposition was intended to be an educational element, but has also historically been framed as an exploitative and patronizing display of colonized people without their consent.[7]
This colonial section of the exposition was linked to the Champs de Mars site by a corridor of pavilions along the left Bank. This corridor, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, also featured a display called "The History of Human Habitation", with model houses depicting the history of domestic architecture, designed with much imagination by Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris Opera.
There were twenty-two different entrances to the exposition, around its perimeter. They were open from 8 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. for the major exhibits and palaces, and until 11:00 in the evening for the illuminated greens and restaurants. The major ceremonial entrance was located at Les Invalides consisting of two tall pylons with colorful ornament, like giant candelabras.[8]
The Eiffel Tower, built especially for the exposition, was the tallest structure in the world at the time. A competition to build what was simply called "A tower of three hundred meters" with a base one hundred meters wide, was announced in 1886. It was won by the construction firm of Gustave Eiffel, which had recently built the iron frame of the Statue of Liberty. The Eiffel firm had advance knowledge of the project and, beginning in 1884, had already designed a tower exactly to those dimensions. The structural design was created by two Eiffel engineers, Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, who along with Eiffel himself, received the patent for the plan. An Eiffel architect, Stephen Sauvestre, designed the curving form and decoration which gave the tower its distinctive appearance. Eiffel was granted exclusive rights for twenty years to operate the tower and its restaurants and viewing platforms. A site next to the River was chosen, despite the infiltration of river water, since that land was owned by the City of Paris, and the tower could be kept in place after the exposition was completed.[9]
The construction lasted two years, two months and five days, and involved five hundred workers, who assembled eighteen thousand iron pieces, each of five meters and carefully numbered, which had been made at a factory in Levallois-Perret, a Paris suburb. Speaking of the tower construction workers, the son-in-law of Eiffel, declared, "no soldier on the battle field deserved better mention than these humble toilers, who, will never go down in history." During the exposition, no one other than construction personnel were allowed higher than the second viewing platform.[10]
In the first week of the exposition, 29,922 persons climbed the tower to the viewing platform, though the elevators were not yet in service, and they had to climb by a narrow winding stairway.[10] By the time the exposition finished, after 173 days, 1,968,287 persons had ascended the tower.[9]
When the exposition ended, the tower was used for a time as a weather station. In 1904, Eiffel proposed to the French military that a radio transmitter, designed by the pioneer radio engineer Edouard Branly, be placed on the third level. In 1909, when Eiffel's concession formally ended, it was decided to preserve the Tower permanently.[9]
A second monumental building on the site was the Galerie des machines, by the architect Ferdinand Dutert and engineer Victor Contamin, which had originally been built for the 1878 Universal Exposition. It was a huge iron and glass structure which contained the industrial displays. It occupied the entire width of the exposition site, the land between the avenue de la Bourdonnais and the present avenue de Suffren, and covered 77,000 square meters, with 34,700 square meters of glass windows. At 111 meters, the Gallery covered the longest interior space in the world at the time, It cost 7,430,000 Francs, or seven times the cost of the Eiffel Tower.[11] It was later used again at the 1900 Universal Exposition and then destroyed in 1910.
One important goal of the exposition was to present the latest in science and technology. Thomas Edison visited the exposition to visit a pavilion devoted to his recent inventions, including an improved phonograph with clearer sound quality.
Another new technology that was promoted at the exposition was the safety elevator, developed by a new American company, Otis Elevator. Otis built the elevators carrying passengers up the legs of the Eiffel Tower to the first level. When journalists expressed concern about the safety of the elevators, Otis technicians filled one elevator with three thousand kilograms of lead, simulating passengers, and then, with journalists from around the world watching, cut the cable with an axe. The elevator's fall was halted ten feet above the ground by the Otis safety brakes.
Prefabricated metal housing was another technology that appeared at the exposition. Gustave Eiffel developed a series of houses with roof and walls of galvanised steel, and wooden interiors, which could be rapidly put together or taken apart, largely for use in French colony of Indochina. Some of them served as ticket booths at the 1889 exposition; one of these old booths, now used as a shelter for hikers, can now be found in the Forest of Dampierre.[15]
The exposition included a building by the Paris architect Pierre-Henri Picq. This was an elaborate iron and glass structure decorated with ceramic tiles in a Byzantine-Egyptian-Romanesque style. After the exposition the building was shipped to Fort de France and reassembled there, the work being completed by 1893. Known as the Schœlcher Library, initially it contained the 10,000 books that Victor Schœlcher had donated to the island. Today, it houses over 250,000 books and an ethnographic museum, and stands as a tribute to the man it is named after who led the movement to abolish slavery in Martinique.
The exposition featured numerous fountains and reflecting pools, particularly in the mall that ran between the Eiffel Tower and the Palace of Machines. The largest fountain, near the Eiffel Tower, was entitled "The City of Paris enlightens the world with its torch." The fountain was designed by Jean-Camille Formigé, who designed the nearby Palaces of Fine Arts and Liberal Arts. The other major fountain, not far away, was "The Five Parts of the World", illustrating the continents. It was designed by Francis de Saint-Vidal.
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