Industrial exhibitions. What secrets did they take with them?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Industrial exhibitions of past centuries are a great mystery, which, despite the abundance of preserved materials, is very little covered in the modern media space. The preserved enough high-quality photo catalogs of exhibitions are not only pleasant to look at, they make one think about many things. As you understand, we will talk about industrial exhibitions that were held in many countries both in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. The Russian Empire was no exception, in which these exhibitions were held regularly until 1917, after which, for obvious reasons, they stopped. But oddly enough, in other states and even on other continents, with a slight delay in time, they also stopped. Maybe there is some kind of causal relationship?

Let's get a look. Oddly enough, with all the variety of exhibitions in Russia and abroad, there are very few materials containing their photo catalogs. On domestic resources, they are practically not freely available, but at the same time there is an unimaginable set of digitized text reports and catalogs for these exhibitions. In foreign resources, the picture looks a little better, and at the same time, interesting materials from Russia of that time come across. A very strange fact. But let's start in order.

The most famous exhibitions are the World Exhibitions in Paris. All interested countries exhibited their products there, and it was this exhibition that set the tone for the global development of everything: from art to the military industry. To be in trend, as they say now, such exhibitions were organized at the state level, in addition to Europe, even in the countries of both America, Asia and Africa. There is a lot of surviving information about such events on the web. But let's start with Paris.

It was in such a palace that she passed. There were still other places, but the main action took place here. This is the Palais des Champ de Mars in Paris. Oddly enough, the palace has not survived to this day. Or another view, after the development of the Field of Mars:

Something like the Eiffel Tower is a little strange, some balls are fixed on its supporting parts. Let's take a closer look, but from the other side (both photos of the tower from 1900):

An interesting situation turns out. On the tower of that time there is some kind of arched cornice with lamps, and if you look closely, there are some columns between the arches that look like the columns on the roof of the Champs de Mars palace. What's on the tower now?

That's right, not at all, and even behind the tower everything is different. But it turns out that everything is simple: the Eiffel Tower itself was originally conceived as "a temporary structure that served as the entrance arch of the Paris World Exhibition of 1889". It turns out that it originally formed a single ensemble with the palace of the Field of Mars, and, accordingly, a single engineering network. This means that the disappearance of the palace and the cornice on the Eiffel Tower is somehow connected. Miracles begin.

But we will be most interested in the Palace of Machines, which has not survived to this day either. Such a lack of preservation for Europe is a very strange phenomenon, but nevertheless a fact is a fact.

It was here that all the world achievements of mechanical engineering of that time were concentrated. And a lot of photographic materials about those exhibitions have survived. Let's delve into them (photo of 1889):

What is the pumping station in the background? Is it a water pump at all? For a pump station in such a climatic region, it is too bold a decision; in frost, it would cease to function almost immediately. Most likely, this is some kind of modernized domed structure that somehow affects the posts on the roof of the building in the background. It is possible that this structure also influenced the posts on the cornice of the Eiffel Tower. When all this was demolished, the cornice on the Eiffel Tower was no longer needed, well, in fact, it was replaced with a simplified one. And before that, he worked like this (photo of 1905):

And our churches, it seems, had something to do with the cars in the pavilion. There are many photos from other exhibitions where similar neighborhood exists.

This is the 1905 exhibition in Geneva. Not quite noticeable, so I specially enlarged two fragments from this photo.

It turns out that the well-known obelisk with a light bulb at the top is also a part of the machine universe. Just do not understand, the leading or the driven link?

And here the number of churches in general is off scale, especially two canoes circled below are pinned. Personally, I came across them here for the first time. Similar things were present in Paris:

And how are we? Oddly enough, these are also pictures from the exhibition:

Thus, we again see an incomprehensible car, circled earlier at foreign exhibitions. In any case, a car means obtaining mechanical energy by converting any other, even another mechanical one (a bicycle, for example). What energy is being transformed here? There is definitely nothing to do with the steam room, otherwise the unit would have looked different. And the dome above once again confirms that in this case natural electrical energy was used, which somehow they managed to get with the help of this spiral Christmas tree. But this is not only present at this exhibition.

As you can see, about a hundred years ago, the craftsmen possessed the secrets of obtaining and using very cheap energy, which is why certain forces not only destroyed this equipment, but also the exhibition pavilions themselves, and powdered the brains of everyone interested in these exhibitions for five generations ahead.

It is worth writing about the Nizhny Novgorod fair separately, its respectability, both internally and externally, was not inferior to the Paris one.

What do you think is now in its place? That's right, a vacant lot in the Kanavinsky district of N. Novgorod, and even on TV it is regularly shown with dreams of reviving the fair. But these dreams, alas, will remain dreams … Even if they decide to revive it (somewhere I very deeply admit such a thought), then such functioning churches and pillars will never be built. The columns, as you understand, are the ones that stand on the roofs of the pavilions.

There is a little secret in these columns, thanks to which they can set fire to gas-filled lamps, something like this:

To understand what we are talking about, I will give a photo from the same exhibition halls in Paris after 1920:

This is a 1922 photo. As you can see, not a single church, and the exhibition at this place will last for several more years, and all the pavilions will be demolished.

This is 1923 and the same thing. The columns in the building are more like decor, as a flask with a certain substance is not attached to them from below. And everywhere is dull electric lighting, executed in the form in which it is now.

So we will not see the Nizhny Novgorod fair for a very long time.