This post is late for two reasons. First, I was a little busy this weekend. And second, I’m working on a new mega-post titled “New technology is always scary.” I’ll probably release all ~6,000 words next Monday as a special edition in honor of hitting 500 subscribers; for now, enjoy this sneak preview!

The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 was the greatest technological demonstration in human history.

The fairgrounds were comprised of fourteen gargantuan buildings built of wood and painted in gleaming white (see above). The largest was big enough to hold Madison Square Garden, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the U.S. Capitol, and the Great Pyramid of Giza at the same time.

It was such an epic event, in fact, that about 42% of the U.S. population attended the fair (!) — including Buffalo Bill, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Clarence Darrow, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, and Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

One of the primary draws to the fair was simple: electricity. As a 1890s Average Joe, the Fair would have been your first run-in with widespread electrical lighting and machinery. (Edison General Electric was only founded the previous year, and it wouldn’t be until 1925 that more than half of U.S. homes were electrified.) Murat Halstead, an esteemed writer in the late 19th century, captured how it felt to see electric lighting for the first time at the Fair.

The Fair, considered as an electric exposition only, would be well worthy the attention of the world. Look from a distance at night, upon the broad spaces it fills, and the majestic sweep of the searching lights, and it is as if the earth and sky were transformed by the immeasurable wands of colossal magicians; and the superb dome of the structure, that is the central glory of the display, is glowing as if bound with wreaths of stars. It is electricity!

The Fair hosted the first public demonstrations of incandescent lighting, searchlights, electric fountains, switchboards, electric railways, telegraphy, telephony, electric clocks, and more. By some estimations, the 5-month-long Fair advanced the progress of electrical invention by as much as a decade.

The Fair also featured wonders as diverse as a Liberty Bell made entirely of fruit and a stage where magic tricks were performed by Ehrich Weiss — who would later adopt the stage name “Harry Houdini.” John Philip Sousa’s band played for the dedication; the Pledge of Allegiance was performed for the first time at the fair; and Katharine Lee Bates was inspired by the Fair to write “America the Beautiful.” An astounding number of iconic American brands made their debuts at the Fair: from Cream of Wheat to Juicy Fruit, from Quaker Oats to Aunt Jemima to Hershey’s, and, my personal favorite, a beer from Pabst that, after winning the Fair’s top honors, forever adopted the name “Blue Ribbon.”

But even those famous firsts paled in comparison to the Fair’s main attraction: a gigantic wheel, nearly 300 feet high, which allowed over 2,000 concurrent passengers to soar over the White City. That wheel was the first of its kind, invented for the Fair by a young engineer: Mr. Ferris.

The list of inventions, cultural icons, and future stars present at the Chicago World’s Fair continues nearly indefinitely, but you get the picture. It was a spectacle to behold.

The overwhelming wonders of the Chicago World’s Fair were emblematic of the age in which they came about. In the 1890s, a wave of inventions changed how all Americans lived and, accordingly, shook the very fabric of American society. To some, the wonders of the Fair inspired their subsequent inventive and creative endeavors. Erik Larson writes:

Walt Disney’s father, Elias, helped build the White City; Walt’s Magic Kingdom may well be a descendant. Certainly the fair made a powerful impression on the Disney family. It proved such financial boon that when the family’s third son was born that year, Elias in gratitude wanted to name him Columbus… The writer L. Frank Baum and his artist-partner William Wallace Denslow visited the fair; its grandeur informed their creation of Oz. The Japanese temple on the Wooded Island charmed Frank Lloyd Wright, and may have influenced the evolution of his “Prairie” residential designs. …Even the Lincoln Memorial in Washington can trace its heritage to the fair. The fair’s greatest impact lay in how it changed the way Americans perceived their cities and their architects.

But to others, the Fair marked everything they were afraid of — the advancement of dangerous ideas, the willing acceptance of a blind public to test out deficient, experimental technology, and the beginning of the end.

That’s the promise and peril of innovation: it represents change. Some people love change; others loathe it.

[to be continued]

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