Achievements
The Exposition Universelle was where talking films and escalators were first publicized, and where Campbell's Soup was awarded a gold medal (an image of which still appears on many of the company's products). At the Exposition Rudolf Diesel exhibited his diesel engine, running on peanut oil. Brief films of excerpts from opera and ballet are apparently the first films exhibited publicly with projection of both image and recorded sound. The Exposition also featured many panoramic paintings and extensions of the panorama technique, such as the Cinéorama, Mareorama, and Trans-Siberian Railway Panorama.
The centrepiece of the Palais de l'Optique was the 1.25-metre-diameter (49 in) "Great Exposition Refractor". This telescope was the largest refracting telescope at that time. The optical tube assembly was 60 meters long and 1.5 meters in diameter and was fixed in place due to its mass. Light from the sky was sent into the tube by a movable 2-meter mirror.
The Paris Expo included a "Negro exposition" (Exposition Nègres d'Amerique), during which photos by Frances Benjamin Johnston, a friend of Booker T. Washington, of his black students of the Hampton Institute were presented. Partly organized by Booker Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, this exhibition aimed at showing African Americans' positive contributions to American society. Additionally, at a time when lynchings in the US were peaking, a human zoo diorama was also present at the exposition, entitled "Living in Madagascar".
Many of the buildings constructed for the Exposition Universelle were demolished after the conclusion of the exposition. Many of the buildings and statues of the world’s fair were made of staff, a low-cost temporary building material invented in Paris in 1876, which consisted of jute fiber, plaster of Paris, and cement. Often the temporary buildings were built on a framework of wood, and covered with staff, which was formed into columns, statuary, walls, stairs, etc. After the fair was over, the buildings were demolished and and all items and materials that could be salvaged and sold were “recycled”.
The Finnish Pavilion at the Exposition was designed by the architectural firm of Gesellius, Lindgren, and Saarinen. It was published in Dekorative Kunst 3 (1900): 457-63, and in L'Architecture à l'Exposition Universelle de 1900, p. 65, Pl. X. Paris: Librairies-Imprimeries Réunies, 1900.
A special committee, led by Gustave Eiffel, awarded a gold medal to Lavr Proskuryakov's project for the Yenisei Bridge in Krasnoyarsk.
Russian sparkling wine defeated all the French entries to claim the internationally coveted "Grand Prix de Champagne". The exposition also was the showcasing of another Russian entry, the widely famous Matryoshka doll (Russian Nesting Doll).
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Famous quotes containing the word achievements:
“Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
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—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)