The Exhibition Visitors
1889 · World's Fair Visit · Work 399 of 1,871
Visitors in a great exhibition hall gathered round a working machine on its plinth, catalogues in hand, an attendant turning a handle as a family leans over the rail.
- What it was used for
- Visiting the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The Bureau International des Expositions, the umbrella body of world expositions, counts 32,250,297 visits across 96 hectares, more than 61,000 exhibitors and around thirty national pavilions; it was inaugurated by President Sadi Carnot on 6 May 1889 and closed on 31 October. Admission cost one franc, according to the company that operates the Eiffel Tower, with five francs extra to climb the Tower — five times the price of entry to the whole fair. In the first week almost 30,000 people went up the 1,710 steps, because the lifts only started working on 26 May.
- What was new
- What was new was not the Tower but the fact that the visit could be bought in tiers: one franc to be there, six to get up. What that meant is in the operators' own figures. The same company gives 1,953,122 Tower visitors for 1889 on one page, "almost 12,000 a day", and "only two million" on another. Against 32.25 million visits to the fair either figure is about six per cent: most people saw the exhibition's icon only from below. The running dates are disputed too: the BIE gives 6 May to 31 October, the Tower company 15 May to 6 November.