The harnessing of the Seine to elevators and fountains, aquarium and air conditioning, the orchestration of the force of water to unite the river with the Palace of Industry on the left bank and the Trocadero Palace on the right — this was the triumph of French engineering at the 1878 exposition universelle. 7 Exposition Universelle Internationale de 1878, Paris.

The wide sweep of the two flanking colonnades was impressive enough; but the Trocadero palace itself looked squat and proportionless.

Georges Berger, Director of the Foreign Sections, was universally applauded for the planning and execution of this "international boulevard. It will be used to make toys talk. . "There was a block of carriages in all the principal thoroughfares," wrote a British correspondent to the fair, "but the greatest content and hilarity prevailed. ", (Click here for a larger view of the Russian pavilion), Impressive as it was, the Rue des Nations would have been even more striking had the exposition commissioners been able to carry out their original plans to build a Street of France across the courtyard from the Street of Nations. "Buildings and Arrangement of the Paris Exposition," Cassell's Magazine of the Arts, I, pp. French soldiers had aided the cause of American independence; and the Founding Fathers openly modeled much of their constitutional thinking on the works of the great French thinkers of the Enlightenment. A canvas showing Alexander the Great defeating Darius of Persia could be noble and uplifting; but a canvas showing a handful of French troops barricaded in a village church and fighting the Prussians to the bitter end — this is bad taste. France had, after all, participated honorably in the Vienna Exhibition in 1873, and in the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.

From the basin, the water flowed down again through the iron and lead pipes, surged beneath the Seine, then emerged quietly in peaceful ponds in the Champs de Mars. — "The Paris Exposition of 1878," ibid., XXVII, pp. One booth featured the first personal printing machine: the typewriter. Bartholdi's "Liberty," though, is more than a monument to the maturing friendship between the nations of France and America. In any event this construction, fabricated out of wood, has no pretensions of solidity or monumental durability. 174, 222.

She is strong, and her spirit will endure.22, Gloria Victis by Antonin Mercié at the 1878 exposition, This is the kind of statement about the Franco-Prussian War that the exposition commissioners were willing to honor: idealized, classical in its narrative references and modeling technique, designed to arouse a sentiment rather than to express an emotion.22A Gloria Victis announces, in suitably symbolic terms, that France had accepted the burden of defeat, and was on the way to complete recovery.23. Once inside the Palace of Industry, the fairgoer would see a range of displays that had by now become familiar types in international exhibitions: huge machines, elaborately decorated furniture, works of fine art — everything from cut glass to corset stays.

"The time had come," wrote Alfred Picard, "for France to lift the veil of sorrow and mourning, and to invite the world to a public festival."2. Isay, Raymond. Another pipe carried water more swiftly beneath the earth, then launched towering, 62-foot high jets that flanked the central fountain like liquid pillars. "7 The congresses of the 1878 exposition continue and expand the work of its predecessors by giving international issues a focal place for people to meet and recognize the universal nature of their concerns. Ory, Pascal.

There were fewer such outlying buildings at the 1878 fair than in the 1867, since this time most nations were given space for their architectural statements on the Rue des Nations inside the Palace of Industry. "The Paris Exposition," Nation, XXVII, p. 39. Crossing the Pont d'Iena from the Trocadero Park, the fairgoer confronted Léopold-Amédé Hardy's impressive facade (constructed by Gustave Eiffel) of the main exposition building. Paris capitulated on January 28, 1871, after a long and bitter siege, and on May 10 the Treaty of Frankfurt brought the war officially to a close. One congress even had to take up a problem created by the world's fairs themselves: how to deal with dishonest manufacturers who falsely advertised medals claimed to have been won at international exhibitions. It was unfinished on the opening day of the exposition, even though over 800 workers labored diligently for a year on the building and its site. At the 1878 exposition, though, it was not painting, but sculpture that most forcibly captured the public's attention. Are they less worthy than the others? Art must be beautiful, not painful. The sights and sounds of the International Choral Competition, in which thousands of singers at a time performed before thousands of spectators, were among the most overwhelming events of the entire exposition. Royle, J.B. "The Paris Universal Exposition," British Almanac Companion 1876, p. 66. The International Congress for the Amelioration of the Condition of Blind People led to the world-wide adoption of the Braille System of touch-reading. But even "official art" at the Exposition showed a remarkable variety. The Germans, of course. Exposition Universelle Internationale de 1878, Paris. Rapports de Jury Internationale; Jules Simon, general editor; (Paris, 1880), page 134. — that the phonograph would render useless the tenors of the opera.

Victor Hugo led the Congress for the Protection of Literary Property, which led to the eventual formulation of international copyright laws.