470523
2013
VCU0010.1177/1470412912470523Journal of Visual CultureHuhtamo
journal of visual culture
(Un)walking at the Fair: About Mobile Visualities at the
Paris Universal Exposition of 1900
Erkki Huhtamo
Abstract
This article is a contribution to urban media archaeology. It sheds
light on ‘mobile visualities’ by concentrating on the Paris Universal
Exposition of 1900. After discussing theories and practices of walking,
it focuses on a specific technological prosthesis for the pedestrian: the
Trottoir roulant, or the moving walkway that circled the exposition
grounds. Even though it was not the first of its kind, the extent,
location, and function of the one in Paris made it special. The Trottoir
roulant not only connected two major parts of the exposition, but
traveled along normal boulevards on an elevated platform. This
turned it into a panoramic viewing machine of sorts for observing
the city as a spectacle. The article analyzes the materiality and history
of the system, but it also discusses its discursive dimensions, such
as the ‘accidentalist imagination’ it inspired and the topos traditions
it activated. The Trottoir roulant’s relationship to photographic and
cinematographic activities at the 1900 fair are also highlighted.
Keywords
mobile media • moving walkways • Paris Universal Exposition of
1900 • Trottoir roulant • urban media archaeology • visual culture in
outdoor spaces • world’s fairs
journal of visual culture [http://vcu.sagepub.com]
SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC)
Copyright © The Author(s), 2013. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalspermissions.nav
Vol 12(1): 61–88 DOI 10.1177/1470412912470523
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journal of visual culture 12(1)
Autrefois, c’était l’homme qui marchait sur le chemin: nous avons si
bien dompté la matière que maintenant c’est le chemin qui marche sous
l’homme (In old times, humans used to walk on roads. We have mastered
it so perfectly that today it is the road that walks under humans).
(Gaston Bergeret, 1901, author’s translation)
How does one visit a world’s fair? The most general answer, ever since
the tradition began: by walking. Unprecedented as its scale was, London’s
Crystal Palace Exhibition (1851) fitted under the roof of Joseph Paxton’s
mighty glasshouse. But walking up and down its aisles was not enough:
coaches, trains, omnibuses, and even steamships were needed to reach
Hyde Park. As expositions grew, the issue of mobility became more and
more pressing. Late 19th-century expositions were huge temporary cities
that required special transportation arrangements, as well as navigation
tools, such as maps and guidebooks. New modes of mobility were not
only practical necessities; they were part and parcel of the ideology of
the world’s fair, dedicated to remarkably contradictory goals: nationalism
and globalization, mutual understanding and self-interest, culture and
commerce, craftsmanship and industrialization. World’s fairs were also
about grasping the world visually by means of displaced sights and
elaborate simulations.
What roles did the visitors’ movements – physical, mechanical, virtual – play
in the world’s fair experience? How did these movements support, enhance,
and, perhaps, question visual observations? Except for Anne Friedberg’s
(2004: 263–276) pioneering efforts, little has been written about this topic.1
The task is arduous – official documents record in minute detail how the
environments were designed, but except for graphs and statistics, they say
little about the individual visitors who crowded them – those anonymous
figures who strolled around, sat on benches, lunched, queued up for the
pavilions, and rode on the attractions. Some of them were captured in
photographs, or scribbled their impressions in postcards, but their mobile
and visual routines have evaded the attention of scholars.
I will shed light on the role of mobile visualities by concentrating on the
Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, one of the most ambitious events of its
kind. Its stature was enhanced by its pivotal position between two centuries.
The theme of the exposition, as expressed by the general commissioner
Alfred Picard (1900: 3, author’s translation), was ‘to be the philosophy and
the synthesis of the century’. As a consequence, there were extensive arrays
of retrospective exhibits of art and design, as well as huge ‘walk into’ spatial
simulations such as Le Village Suisse (the Swiss Village) and Le Vieux Paris
(Old Paris), the author–illustrator Albert Robida’s interpretation of Paris
as it might have been during past centuries. Yet, aside from summing up
the past, the aim was also to demonstrate France’s role in the ‘avant-garde
of progress’. This was embodied in exhibits and attractions that pointed
toward the future of urbanity. Some of them referred simultaneously to the
past and the future, stretching typical 19th-century visual technologies into
the dawning new century.
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 63
After discussing briefly the
case of walking, I will focus
on a form that enhanced
or displaced it by means
of a new technological
solution: le Trottoir roulant,
or the moving walkway
that circled the exposition
grounds (see Figure 1).
Mobile forms of an era do not
exist solely as materialized
intentions of authorities,
organizers, inventors, and
engineers – they also
manifest themselves as
manifold discourses that
envelop and affect them.
Official documents, guidebooks, and maps provide
information about practicalarrangements, but say
little about the thoughts,
feelings, and interpretations
of those who witnessed
the event. We must consult
other types of textual and
visual evidence to gain
clues about how people
made sense of their experiences while exploring the
exposition grounds.
Figure 1 ‘Exposition Universelle, 26 Juillet
1900. Le Trottoir Roulant.’ Visitors riding on
the moving walkway on 26 July, 1900 during
the Paris Universal Exposition. An amateur
photograph (?) mounted on card stock.
Author’s collection.
Beside Friedberg (2004), this article has been inspired by John Urry
(2007), whose Mobilities offers a ‘wide-ranging analysis of the role that
movement of people, ideas, objects and information plays in social life’
(p. 17). I find Urry’s notion of ‘mobility-system’ useful for my purposes. As
he explains, each form of mobility presupposes ‘a “system” (in fact many
such systems)’ that ‘provide “spaces” of anticipation’ and permit predictable
and relatively risk-free repetition of the movement in question’ (pp. 12–13).
Urry emphasizes that mobility-systems ‘need to be understood in terms
of the social relations that surround and implicate them’ (p. 10), which I
readily endorse. A world’s fair is a complex of intersecting and overlapping
systems, designed to maintain smooth operation flows to prevent accidents,
congestion, and frustration (to avoid encumbering the flow of money).
Mobilities are part of such ‘systems of systems’, dynamically interconnected
with publicity, ticket sales, catering, security, and other systems. It is such
a dense ‘garden of forking paths’ each visitor traverses, negotiating one’s
experience on the go.
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Walking Through Scripted Spaces
In her history of walking, Rebecca Solnit (2000: 63) refused to treat her
topic as something self-evident, comparing it with culture:
We tend to consider the foundations of our culture to be natural, but
every foundation had builders and an origin – which is to say that it
was a creative construction, not a biological inevitability.2
This applies well to the world’s fair, a highly ‘scripted’ space.3 The visitors’
movements are part of the overall design. Their steps are as if taken in
advance, routes trodden, maps and guidebooks printed, and signs posted.
It is only within this premeditated and controlled space that the visitors
are allowed to move. The world’s fair is a thoroughly semiotic construct.
Its innumerable signs are related to authoritative codes the visitors are
expected to master and obey.
Of course, people don’t always do what they are told. They make their
own decisions, change their minds, follow a moment’s fancy. In other
words, they negotiate between what is required and what one wants to do.
When the American travel lecturer Burton Holmes was exploring the huge
immersive realm of Le Village Suisse, he escaped from ‘the watchful eye of
the policeman’ and engaged in an act of transgression:
We climb the fence and wander up this tempting valley, and then,
turning, we gaze up at the beetling crags, only to find beyond an Alpine
range, a startlingly substantial ‘rainbow’ formed by the periphery of
the Big Wheel. (Holmes, 1908: 287–291)4
As a seasoned and sarcastic observer, Holmes derived pleasure from
witnessing the sudden appearance of La Grande Roue de Paris, a giant
Ferris Wheel, from behind the ‘Artificial Alps’. Breaking the rules made a
calculated visual illusion collapse. Although most visitors were likely more
servile, the basic principle holds: mobility systems are not only used as
intended – they are tested, re-interpreted, and even re-functionalized.
John Dixon Hunt’s (2003) theory of movements through gardens – another
scripted space – provides a model that helps us to make sense of the
relationships between spaces and the practices of moving through them.
Hunt identifies three modalities: procession or ritual, stroll, and ramble.
Procession or ritual follows a preordained path or purpose, pre-imposed
on the visitor. Stroll and ramble involve personal initiative-taking; the
former has a goal and purpose, whereas the latter is free roaming without
preordained routes or destinations. The procession/ritual is evidently
preferred by world’s fair’s organizers, because it serves their quest for
control. It manifests itself not only as guided tours and special events, but
also in the structure of the fair with its routes, sign systems, and security
guards. Even ephemeral giveaways, such as paper fans with maps of the
exposition printed on them, support the predefined ritualistic of the visit.5
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 65
Stroll and ramble can never be completely free from constraints. Procession
transforms itself into stroll and back again, if the visitor keeps deviating
from suggested routes to follow his or her own interests. In Paris, this may
have happened to those who used a guidebook named American Cicerone,
which contained a detailed itinerary for speed-visiting the exposition in
two days (Kératry, 1900, section ‘Exposition’, after the main volume, with
own page numbering: 9–21). Overseas guests consulting a copy of Harper’s
Guide to Paris and the Exposition of 1900 were urged to begin their visit
with a ‘preliminary promenade’ through the exposition grounds, ‘on foot
in about three hours’ time’ (p. 42).6 There is no way to tell how many of
the millions who entered through the entrance gates were ready for such
rituals.7 Many may have followed the itineraries part of the way, modifying
them according to their own interests, whimsies, and states of fatigue. As
they moved around, the visitors drew their own ‘psychogeographies’ over
a pre-mapped terrain.8 Countless idiosyncratic maps, all different and yet
all strangely reminiscent of each other, were drawn by animated feet at any
one time.
Verifying speculations like these by tracing the movements of actual visitors
is not easy because the evidence is so fragmentary – mere glimpses of
what may have been patterns. In Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Edward
Insley (1900) examined the habits of American visitors, contrasting their
informal manners with the formal conduct of the French. Guidebooks
routinely pointed this out, urging the Americans to adjust their behaviors
by observing their hosts. An incident that was widely reported and even
distributed as a stereoview was the ‘democratic avalanche’ at the opening of
the American Pavilion. A crowd of young Americans, ‘pretty girls and pretty
frocks’, determined to take part in the opening ceremony and believing they
were allowed to do so, ‘swept the French police out of [their] way with a
disdain and imperiousness that left them helpless and stupefied’ (p. 490).9
A clash between culturally determined behavioral codes took place.
According to Insley, Americans were looking for pleasure, which made
them gravitate toward Rue de Paris, a concentration of small theatres and
other attractions by the Seine. They found it unnecessary to enter the
shows; watching street artists and barkers was enough: ‘This free “théatre
en plein air” is really more interesting than the others which the spectators
pay to see’ (p. 493).10 Insley concluded that ‘most Americans who have
come to the gay capital for the first time this year are inclined to regard
the Moulin Rouge as Paris and side-shows as the Exposition’ (p. 492).
Their attitudes may have been motivated by the codes of tourism, a poor
command of French, and the desire to save money (an issue constantly
raised in texts about the exhibition: the entrance fee was only the tip of
a mounting monetary iceberg). An American named RN Willcox (1900),
who self-published an account of his visit, used either a hired guide or a
guidebook, but ignored the nature of many exhibits (Willcox, 1900: 70).
On the subject of the spectacular panoramic attraction Le Tour du Monde
(see Figure 2), he only said that ‘there are many fine painting [sic] on
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journal of visual culture 12(1)
Figure 2 Visitors in front of the pavilion that housed Louis
Dumoulin’s massive panoramic attraction Le Tour du Monde. The
eclectic building was designed by Alexandre Marcel. From Baschet
(1900, no page numbers). Author’s collection.
exhibition, and should be seen to be appreciated’ (p. 70). Characterizing
the Tyrolian Pavilion flatly as ‘very pretty’, and the Transatlantic Panorama
and the ‘Meorama’ (should read ‘Maréorama’) as ‘famous for their exact
representations’ gives an impression that he did not enter them at all
(p. 68).
It is tempting to suggest that the Americans’ dominant modes of mobility
were stroll and ramble (or their combinations), whereas they had little
patience for procession. Yet, Insley claimed that, in spite of her lust for
amusements, ‘The American Girl’ – unlike her phlegmatic brother, who
remained indifferent – explored the exhibits with her Baedeker and formed
opinions of them.11 In his amusing novel Oaky, the Son of His Dad (1901),
the Harvard-educated dentist Dr Ellis Proctor Holmes added another contrary
indicator. Possibly using his own first-hand experiences as an inspiration,
Holmes depicts in lively detail the adventures of a group of Americans at
the Universal Exposition of 1900. One of them is a self-made man named
Sam White, who has made a fortune in the gold-mining business. Instead
of rambling, he plans each day’s targets carefully by marking them on a
map. His main destination is the Palace of Mining and Metallurgy, where he
goes to learn tips for his trade (Holmes, 1901: 251–253). Fiction is fiction,
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 67
and discursive fragments are just that, fragments, but at least they warn us
against unwarranted generalizations.
Local visitors enjoyed the privilege of being able to visit multiple times.
Accounting for their movements is not easy. Numerous photogravures
collected in the handsome album Le Panorama 1900 Exposition Universelle
(Baschet, c. 1900) seem to indicate that they preferred combinations of
procession and stroll.12 Page after page, we see well-dressed visitors
calmly exploring the grounds and the pavilions. Yet, it is evident that the
photographs have been retouched: figures have been added and rearranged.
They communicate an idealized vision, rather than the thing an Sich.
Absences are significant. It is striking to discover practically no children,
lower-class people, or identifiable foreigners. Until the very end – as we
will see later – there are no glimpses of the reckless and colorful spirit of le
gai Paris, with the flâneur, a prototypical ‘rambler’, as one of its corollaries.
The album persuades us to believe that the exposition was a Belle Epoque
affair for the wealthy; an event where the French bourgeoisie celebrated
its achievements in style and comfort. It is less a direct document than an
ideological effort to erase difference, fill in cracks, and to lighten up the
dark shadows cast by the Dreyfus Affair.13
Le Trottoir roulant as a Mobility-System
Walking was the main mode of roaming the exposition grounds, but as
Harper’s Guide to Paris and the Exposition of 1900 added as a caveat to
its three-hour ‘preliminary promenade’, those ‘not desirous of undertaking
so long a walk’ could hire ‘bath chairs or other similar vehicles’. Indeed,
‘rolling chairs’ (fauteuils roulants) with operators pushing them were
offered for rent. Around the colonial exhibits of the Trocadéro area there
were rickshaws and filanzanes as exotic alternatives (see The Century
Dictionary, 1914).14 Such mobile prostheses had limited appeal at the 1900
exposition, partly because of high prices, partly because of limited areas
where they operated.15 More robust solutions were needed because the
exposition was divided into sections that were far apart. On the left bank of
the Seine, there was a concentration of pavilions around the Esplanade des
Invalides. A narrow strip of pavilions along the river connected it with the
main part of the exposition at the Champ-de-Mars (around the Eiffel Tower).
Between these areas there was just ordinary city with boulevards, shops,
bars, and apartment buildings.
The organizers intended to connect these areas with an electric railway
running along a circular track (Picard, 1903: 219–286, see Figure 3). The
competition they organized was won by a combinatory solution: the engineer
Charles Cavelier de Mocomble (representing the system Blot-Guyenet-de
Mocomble) proposed a moving walkway running next to the electric railway
(chemin de fer électrique), but in the opposite, counterclockwise direction.
Both were to cover approximately the same distance (roughly 3300 meters),
and operate on top of elevated viaducts. The jury found several advantages.
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The double system would be effective – the Trottoir roulant could transport
even more passengers than the railway. As a novelty, the moving walkway
would ‘seduce’ visitors and become one of the landmarks of the exposition.
By positioning it on top of a viaduct it could be run above existing streets;
demolishing buildings or cutting down trees would be unnecessary.
Entrances to the platform could be added where needed, and the nearest
pavilions could be accessed without having to descend to the street level
(Picard, 1903: 225–226).
The idea of the moving walkway was not new. Several patents had been
granted since the 1870s, including one for Blot in 1886. An engineer named
Eugène Hénard had suggested for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889 a
free ‘continuous train’, a moving platform circling the exposition area. The
users could have walked or stood on the platform which was on ground
level, or sat on moving ‘balconies’ erected above it.16 It was not built, and so
the American engineers Schmidt and Silsbee (applying a system patented by
the German Rettig brothers in 1889) became the first to realize a functioning
moving walkway at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. They exhibited a
follow-up version at the Berliner Gewerbe-Austellung (the Berlin trade
exhibition) in 1896. Instead of copying their system, Blot, Guyenet and de
Figure 3 A chromolithographic trade card for Chocolat Iblet,
depicting the moving walkway planned for the Universal Exposition
of 1900 (characterized as ‘La Plate-Forme Mobile du Champ-de-Mars’).
The card must have been produced beforehand, because the realized
Trottoir roulant did not circle the Champ-de-Mars, reaching only its
eastern side. Author’s collection.
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 69
Mocomble introduced improvements that made their system more flexible
and reliable, and easier to service even when it was running (Corthell,
1899).17 The railway and the walkway had their own viaducts. The latter
circulated at the even height of 7 meters, whereas the former’s tracks were
positioned lower, and ascended and descended between its five groundlevel stations (see Figure 4). Understandably, it was compared with ‘Russian
mountains’ (pleasure railways popular at fairgrounds) (Quantin, 1900:
334). Each of the small trains had three carriages, carrying a total of 200
passengers. During peak hours, the trains could run every two minutes. The
moving walkway, which was erected on an iron viaduct, was divided into
three parallel platforms. On the outer edge, there was a stationary platform;
next to it, a slow platform moving about 1 meter per second; next to it, a fast
platform moving at about twice that speed. The slow platform was meant to
facilitate stepping on the fast platform and off again. To make boarding and
descending easier, metal posts that moved with the platforms were erected
at regular intervals. The system had 172 A/C motors powered by a purposebuilt independent power station (La plate-forme mobile et le chemin de fer
électrique. Programme hebdomadaire de l’exposition, 1900: 9).
Figure 4 ‘Le Trottoir Roulant & le Chemin de Fer Électrique,
Perspective de l’Avenue de la Bourdonnais.’ Large photographic
albumen print by Neurdein frères, Paris, 1900. The scene depicts
the moving walkway and the electric railway at the south-east
corner of le Champ-de-Mars, in front of the imposing La Galerie
des Machines. Avenue de la Bourdonnais is seen leading into the
distance. Author’s collection.
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The fast track of the moving walkway made the full circle in about 25
minutes, while the railway, traveling at 16 km/h, took only 12 minutes
(clockwise).18 The systems were described as mirror images of each other.
The Trottoir roulant was imagined as an enormously long train placed
upside-down with its wheels rolling. The moving platform seemed to
be placed on top of the wheels. As in a fantasyland where everything is
inverted, the tracks, not the train, were in locomotion (pp. 5–6). The double
system was also explained to reflect the separation between intermittent
and continuous modes of transportation (Picard, 1903: 256). Coaches,
trams, and ships operated intermittently: they came and went at regular
or irregular intervals.19 Conveyors and chutes with water wheels were
continuous. They had been already used for transporting raw material or
goods in mines and factories.20 Replacing inanimate things with humans
promised a transportation revolution.
The train and walkway combination was a first, but the elements that
made a real difference were its extent, location, and function. Schmidt and
Silsbee’s walkway in Chicago had been installed on a long pier extending
into Lake Michigan.21 Leading nowhere, it was a pleasure ride rather than
a utility. The rows of benches covering the fast track identified it as a
kind of continuous open-air train (Windsor, 1893: 550).22 Commenting on
the version shown in Berlin in 1896, Engineering Mechanics (1896: 193)
stated: ‘The necessity for its use in our larger cities has not yet reached the
point where capital is attracted to its introduction.’23 In Paris, a step was
taken in this direction. The walkway in Berlin was only 500 yards (457
meters) long, and merely connected two destinations (a pleasure park and
Alt-Berlin, or ‘Old Berlin’) within the exhibition. The one in Paris was over
six times longer and circled above a great metropolitan city.24 As Insley
(1900: 494) remarked, ‘this one … actually goes somewhere and is of
some real utility.’ In Paris, the seats were left out. Making the users walk
or stand made them feel like pedestrians, emphasizing true urban mobility
over a pleasure ride.
It was estimated that the Trottoir roulant could have transported 96,000,000
passengers during the 199 days of the exposition (La plate-forme mobile
et le chemin de fer électrique, 1900: 15). The results were a far cry from
the estimate: between 16 April and 12 November, ‘only’ 6,654,002 people
bought full-price tickets for the moving walkway, while the electric railway
transported 2,635,867 people (Picard, 1903: 254).25 Considering the huge
amount of attention the double system received, these figures must have
disappointed the stockholders of the Compagnie des Transports Electriques
de l’Exposition. The Trottoir roulant’s loss was nearly 500,000 francs.
Although the electric railway made a profit of over 172,000 francs (partly
because of its lower overall expenses), the company’s loss was over 327,500
francs. Each shareholder lost 55 percent of the initial investment.26 The
system was not to blame; it operated without major problems. Only two
minor accidents (a sprained foot and an electric shock) were recorded
on the electric railway and just 43 incidents on the moving walkway, all
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 71
involving people who had lost their balance (the most serious cases being
fractures suffered by two elderly persons) (Picard, 1903: 253, 283).
The most likely explanation for the failure was the ticket price. A single
ticket cost 50 centimes for the moving walkway and 25 centimes for the
electric railway. Such prices did not encourage repeated use. Had the Trottoir
roulant been a free service, the number of users would probably have been
much higher. Quantin (1900: 333–334) wondered if the elimination of seats
had played a role, but admitted that the possibility of being seated had not
increased the use of the electric railway. As a response to such concerns,
folding chairs were available for rent. They could be used on the moving
platforms as well, but the price was again too high: two francs. Such chairs
are not visible in any of the photographs I have seen.27 Toward the end of
the exposition, when the novelty value of the moving walkway had run dry,
50 garden benches with sun shades were installed on the fast track, and are
said to have been used actively (Picard, 1903: 268–269).28
Speeding Past Your Window, or Panoramas and Privacy
Les fleuves, disait Pascal, sont des chemins qui marchent. Les curieux
qui viennent visiter l’Exposition y découvrent un chemin qui marche
et qui n’est point un fleuve (Pascal once said that rivers are roads that
walk. Curious visitors will discover at the Universal Exposition a road
that walks, but is not a river). (Le Livre d’Or de l’Exposition de 1900:
47, author’s translation)
A reporter covering the Paris exposition for the British Art Journal observed
the Trottoir roulant from the street below. He could not hide his enthusiasm:
The effect, from the street below, was an extraordinary one: endless
crowds of people were seen being swiftly carried along, a few who
were walking had the effect of skaters rapidly and easily skimming
past the rest. All seemed to be travelling in a manner which the tired
pedestrian looked upon with envy. In brief, the Moving Pavement was
a success. It afforded a new sensation, endless amusement, much rest
and relaxation. It was useful, and not unornamental. Its promoters may
be satisfied that they provided the Exhibition with a most novel and
characteristic feature. (Butler, 1901: 276)
For those who climbed to the viaduct, the Trottoir roulant offered sensorymotor experiences that cannot be summed up by a simple formula. The
fact that it was considered a novelty and received mostly with enthusiasm
cannot be doubted. It was declared the clue of the exposition, and was
perpetuated in countless photographs, magazine illustrations, and picture
postcards. Lumière and Edison shot films on it. Auguste Darcaigne composed
an Allegro-Caprice (c. 1900) inspired by the Trottoir roulant, which was
released as sheet music to be played by piano at home. Even board games
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journal of visual culture 12(1)
Figure 5 Trottoir roulant Paris 1900 – mechanical game by
unknown French manufacturer, c. 1900. By turning the wheel
(right) with a wooden stick, the figures are made to move forward
on the rotating platforms. The one that reaches the French flag first
is the winner. This rare game apparatus is an adaptation of
mechanical tabletop horse-riding games. It also evokes the
carousel. Author’s collection.
and mechanical toys (see Figure 5) were produced as mementos for those
who wanted to re-enact the experience afterwards in privacy (if it could be
re-enacted at all).29 There were also many published descriptions; at least
some of them reflected the writer’s own experiences. The enterprise may
have failed financially, but the exposition organizers must have been pleased;
they got what they wanted in the form of a huge amount of publicity.
It was not uncommon to compare the scenes the travelers witnessed to
a panorama. Le Livre d’Or de l’Exposition de 1900 captioned one of
its photographs ‘Le Panorama du Trocadéro, vu du Tottoir [sic] roulant’
(The Panorama of Trocadéro, seen from the Moving Walkway’, p. 48),
emphasizing this association. Trocadéro is seen in the background,
while a crowd of people on the Trottoir roulant fills the foreground. The
association can be partly explained by the elevated structure, which must
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 73
have recalled the central viewing platforms of circular panorama buildings
(massive examples of which, such as the Panorama Transatlantique and
the Panorama de Madagascar, were included in the 1900 exposition).
Establishing this connection, a guidebook emphasized how the travelers
on the Trottoir roulant were able to admire ‘from the top of the balcony
the details of the panorama offered to their eyes’. However, it continued:
‘… or to reach as quickly as possible any part of the circuit’ (Kératry, 1900:
section ‘Exposition’, after the main volume, with own page numbering: 6).
This remark adds another aspect to the comparison.
In a panorama rotunda, visitors walked around on the viewing platform to
see all aspects of the circular painting, which remained static. As the Trottoir
roulant speeded passengers toward their destinations, the scenes they
witnessed seemed to be in motion. An American engineer expressed this
succinctly: ‘The aerial disposition [of the viaduct] … permits a complete tour
of the Exposition and furnishes travelers with extremely varied panoramic
views’ (Corthell, 1899: 320). The Trottoir roulant turned a vibrant city
into a panoramic visual spectacle, where each ‘scene’ was a kinetic ‘living
picture’. The immediacy of the view was enhanced by the lack of walls
and windows; the moving walkway was no train. The situation could
be likened to a ‘moving panorama’ (another popular spectacle), but not
directly: in the latter, it was a picture roll that moved, while the spectators
remained stationary. Rarely were there picture rolls unfolding on both sides
– the most spectacular example of all was shown at the 1900 exposition,
a short stroll from the nearest exit of the Trottoir roulant. Hugo d’Alési’s
Le Maréorama was a simulated sea voyage, where the spectators walked
around a hydraulically swayed boat deck, while two giant rolls of painted
canvas rolled past on both sides (see Huhtamo, 2013: 313–317).
The satirist Gaston Bergeret, who wrote a delightful little book titled
Journal d’un nègre à l’exposition de 1900 (1901), suggested that, as each
successive exhibition grew bigger and bigger, the city and the exposition
were increasingly interconnected (p. 5). One day Paris itself would be the
exposition. Le Trottoir roulant materialized this idea because, for about
half of its trajectory, it ran outside the exposition area along the Avenues
de la Bourdonnais and Motte-Piquet. The viaduct stood in front of many
apartment windows, which gave Bergeret’s narrator (a black man as ‘the
other’) an opportunity to assure the reader that he was very ‘pleased’ with
the Trottoir roulant, because it gave visitors with no acquaintances in the
city an opportunity to peek into the apartments of the Parisians, and to get
familiar with their habits. He ‘regretted’ that so many unpatriotic inhabitants,
in a ‘spirit of defiance’, keep their windows closed during the walkway’s
operating hours. Should not the apartment buildings along the Avenue de
la Bourdonnais really be considered part of the exposition?, he wondered
(Bergeret, 1901: 42–43).
Within the urban panorama, windows were ‘peepshows’ displaying
glimpses of interior life. To what extent Bergeret’s quips were inspired by
contemporary chatter is difficult to estimate. According to Burton Holmes
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(1908: 235–236), who had come to Paris to collect material for his illustrated
magic lantern lectures, as the moving walkway passed ‘through a busy street
on a level with the second-story windows’, it opened ‘new and tempting
opportunities for flirtatious Frenchmen’. He noticed an attractive woman
waving her hand in a window – only to discover that it was a life-size cutout
figure with a ‘waxen smile’ (see Figure 6) and an artificial moving hand: an
advertising display for Appareils Eyquem.30 Was it inspired by the practice
of exhibiting oneself in a window? The Parisian bordello business must
have wanted its own share of the capital flows swelled by the exposition,
but would it have resorted to such strategies? Be that as it may, outdoor
advertising was prominent in the city of Jules Chéret and Hugo d’Alési,
whose colorful posters gained both praise and disgust. Urban wallpaper was
admired, but also considered an affront to refined taste and the freedom of
the eye to roam freely.
The playwright Georges Courteline (1858–1929) suggested that citizens
forced to live next to the Trottoir roulant had their privacy violated. He
focused on this issue in L’Article 330, a satirical one-act farce, which was
probably performed at the Grand Guignol Theater in the Rue de Paris area
of the exposition.31 The play’s protagonist, a middle-aged bourgeois named
Jean-Philippe La Brige, has the misfortune of living at 5bis Avenue MottePiquet, in front of the Plate-forme mobile. He is summoned to court by no
less than 13,687 people, who accuse him of indecent behavior: a bare bottom
had been exposed from his second-floor apartment. The action takes place
in a courtroom, where La Brige, a ‘defensive philosopher’, tries to justify his
behavior, claiming that people not only peeped into his bedroom and made
Figure 6 ‘Waxen Smiles’, from Burton Holmes (1908: 235).
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 75
comments about his apartment, but also threw in cherry stones, peanuts,
olives, and pumpkin seeds. The transportation company, the exhibition
administration, and the city of Paris had all turned a deaf ear to La Brige’s
complaints. The court shows no sympathy either and sends him to prison.
Thus, the system triumphs over the individual.
The moving walkway’s threat to private life was expressed in a curious
anecdote about the American ambassador. Tired of giving endless speeches at
the exposition, he is said to have suggested: ‘Why not prepare one speech, and
deliver it in a continuous burst of eloquence, from the Plate-Forme Mobile?’
(Holmes, 1908: 239–240). Absurd as this idea is, such ‘declamation in motion’
anticipates the inescapable political and commercial patter in modern society,
amplified by ubiquitous media channels. Indirectly, it highlights another
source of annoyance: the noise caused by the system and its users. Capitalist
interests were overriding the rights of the citizen. Mildred Minturn (1906: ix–
x), who translated Jean Jaurès’ Studies in Socialism, used the moving walkway
as a metaphor to illustrate the workings of the private ownership of capital.
While ‘nine tenths of the human race walk on their own feet and go fast or
slow according to the strength they have and the effort they put forth’, she
argued, the remaining one tenth ‘are able to jump on to the moving sidewalk,
or are deposited there by the effort or favour of others’. Some of them manage
to jump from the slow to the faster track: ‘These are the men who have
manipulated their share of wealth-producing wealth with most success.’
Picture Taking on the ‘Walking Road’
At the turn of the century, snapshot photography was still relatively recent,
but growing numbers of people had adopted it as a hobby since the beginning
of the roll film era in the 1880s. Burton Holmes (1908: 312) explained
that ‘although cameras are admitted free, there is a tax of five dollars [25
francs] daily for the use of tripods in the grounds.’ Handheld cameras were
tolerated as part of the exposition experience. The modest quality of the
results made them more likely to end up in private albums rather than for
public exploitation. But even with the very expensive permit, tripods were
forbidden after 1 pm. The tripod indicated a professional photographer or
serious amateur worth controlling. Regulating its use was no doubt meant
to assure the smooth circulation of visitors, protecting their privacy and preempting complaints. The commercial interests of the exhibitors were also
safeguarded. It was promptly stated that no object was to be photographed
or a picture reproduced without the exhibitor’s consent (see ‘Photographes
et photographie’, Guide illustré du Bon Marché: x).
Quite a few photographs taken on the moving walkway were published (see
Figure 7), and many others must lie buried in private albums. What did the
mechanical eye capture? The majority of the ones I have seen concentrate
on the moving walkway and the people riding on it, rather than on the
‘panoramic’ scenery surrounding it. For the photographers, the Plate-forme
mobile with its users was the principal attraction. In a typical shot, the
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platform is seen extending into the distance, creating a deep perspectival
space. This was a perfect situation for stereoscopic photographs, and some
were indeed taken. Normally there are people standing on the platforms.
They are often, but not always, depicted from behind. Although frozen, such
compositions enhance the sense of motion, drawing the viewer into the
scene, prompting the gaze to follow the shadowy figures into the distance.
Such compositions may have been motivated by an effort to safeguard the
privacy of the subjects, or, perhaps, by the ‘snapper’s’ shyness.
The opposite trope can also be discovered: people riding toward the
photographer. There are well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, children,
and elderly people as well. Some of them are walking or trying to change
platform, while others are standing still, occasionally leaning against the
fence (which moved with the fast track). In one impressive shot, a group
of ladies visiting from the seaport of Boulogne are seen moving toward
the photographer, each wearing the distinctive circular hat of the region.
In one photograph (in La plate-forme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique,
1900: cover, 13) a cyclist is even seen on the fast track, but one wonders
if that is a stunt (bicycles were not allowed on the exposition grounds, see
‘Trottoir Roulant, la Gare du Pont des Invalides’, nd, photo c. 1900). These
two tropes correspond with ones seen in early moving pictures, and are
present in the short films the Edison cameraman James H White shot on
the Trottoir roulant (Friedberg, 2004: 265–266).32 He filmed either from the
Figure 7 ‘Souvenir de l’Exposition – sur le pont Roulant.’ Stereoscopic
postcard, 1900, showing the Trottoir roulant at Quai d’Orsay, next to
the Italian Pavilion. Pont Roulant (‘Rotating bridge’) is a variant rarely
encountered in contemporary documents about the Trottoir roulant.
Author’s collection.
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 77
Figure 8 ‘Épreuve d’Amateur’ (An Amateur’s Snapshot), a cartoon by
Jehan Testevuide (La plate-forme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique,
1900). Author’s collection.
stationary platform, or traveled with his camera on the slower track. Where
the films differ from the photographs is in their livelier quality. Jumping
from platform to platform is often seen, with people acknowledging the
camera, either spontaneously or in a premeditated manner.
Cinematography was capable of capturing the experience better than
photography, the art of the frozen moment. Still, with a techno ground
moving under their feet, the practitioners of both media were put in
precarious situations. A cartoon shows an amateur photographer preparing
to snap a shot of an elegant couple. All are standing safely on the fast
platform (see Figure 8). He asks his subjects to freeze, takes a step back to
frame his composition – and lands on the slower platform. Of course, the
photographer and his camera go topsy-turvy. A cartoon cannot prove that
similar things actually happened; it can only refer to the possibility, and
to the presence of the notion in the imagination. The cartoon could quite
as well be read just as a manifestation of a topos encountered many times
earlier – the mishaps of photographers (see Huhtamo, 2008). Instead of a
bull or a jealous husband attacking the unsuspecting photographer, it is his
accidental physical subordination to a machine in motion that upsets his
normal equilibrium.
The otherwise subdued publication Le Panorama 1900 Exposition Universelle
closed with a ‘snap-shock attraction’: an elderly lady, who has tried to step
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Figure 9 ‘Le Trottoir Roulant’, manipulated photograph, from
Baschet (c. 1900, final page).
on the moving platform, has been captured by the photographer in mid-air,
falling straight on her back, her arms stretched out and a silent scream on
her lips (see Figure 9). In a fraction of a second she will hit the back of her
head against the fence; a serious injury or possibly death will occur. A man
is rushing for help – too late! – while a younger lady, riding safely on the
fast platform, turns and giggles heartily at her misfortune. Other travelers
pay no attention. Another lady makes a successful leap in the background.
The caption praises the charms of the ‘“walking road” … that dominated
the exposition’, emphasizing the pleasure of passing from one platform to
another ‘with a light and gracious leap that sometimes leads to a fall not at
all dangerous’. A few deadpan lines of statistics about the moving walkway
and the exposition follow. What on earth is going on here?
The small print does its best to emphasize the verisimilitude of the picture
by stating that the ‘photographic plate [was] obtained with Zeiss-Krauss
objectives’. However, a closer look reveals that what we see is a cut-and-paste
affair, a photomontage. Although some of the figures may have been part of
the original photograph, the accident has been staged in ‘postproduction’.
Freezing the moment was the forte of photography, but a camera eye would
not have been able to capture such a fleeting scene. The accident is the
result of deliberate design, and so is the decision to position the plate as the
closing ‘treat’, followed only by a kind of bonus – a long folding panorama
depicting the row of national pavilions along the left bank of the Seine. Is
this sensationalist photogravure meant just to give the publication a ‘lighter’
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 79
Figure 10 ‘A Slight Mishap on the Moving Platform at the Paris
Exhibition.’ Illustration ‘drawn from life’ by Paul Benouard
(The Graphic, 23 June: 919). Author’s collection.
finish (like some television newscasters do), or is there a hidden agenda
that can be teased out from its fairly well but not perfectly hidden seams?
The Accidentalist Imagination
The motive of accidents on the Trottoir roulant came up over and over
again in both texts and in graphic illustrations. The latter gave opportunities
for more dramatic scenes than photographs (the example just discussed
notwithstanding). The Graphic (23 June 1900: 919) published a lithograph
‘drawn from life’ by Paul Benouard, depicting the aftermath of a very similar
incident (see Figure 10).33 The victim is a stocky elderly lady. Someone has
bent down to help her and an attendant is rushing to the scene, but the
excited crowd pays little attention. A girl is swinging playfully from platform
to platform, grasping a post with both hands, while another attendant is
offering his arm to a pretty young lady.34 The caption speaks about ‘a slight
mishap’, adding nonchalantly that ‘occasionally nervous people find a little
difficulty in adapting themselves to the traveling pathway’.
In a patronizing tone, Burton Holmes (1908: 233–235) claimed that stepping
from the stationary platform to the mobile ones required ‘little skill’, but
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‘nine women out of ten, with that innate feminine impulse to face the wrong
way, found it impossible to effect a change of base without a stumble and
a shriek’.35 In support of his argument, Holmes snapped a photograph, in
which a girl is seen trapped between the slow and the fast platform, holding
onto different posts with both hands and virtually being ‘torn apart’. This is
how Holmes analyzed what he saw: ‘Many of [the women], once upon the
moving platform, remained transfixed, clutching a post, irrevocably swept on
until rescued by some uniformed attendant’ (p. 235, photograph on p. 234).
Countering Holmes’s male chauvinism, the cover of the sheet music edition
of Darcaigne’s Le Trottoir Roulant depicts an independent-looking and joyful
young lady leaning against the fence of the fast platform in full command of
the situation, her skirt and muffler flapping in the breeze.
Others ascribed similar problems to both sexes and different age groups.
The American Josiah Staunton Moore (1901: 186) described the perils of his
travel companion J Vincent Perley and others in a lively manner:
Perley made an attempt to get on. He caught hold of a post of the
fast sidewalk with one hand and a post of the slow sidewalk with the
other. In a second he was drawn out to his full length. He is very tall
and thin, but he looked longer and thinner than ever. After he had
been pulled nearly in two, he let go one of the posts; his umbrella
and hat went on at five miles an hour, whilst his body followed at
two miles an hour. I don’t think I ever had a more enjoyable laugh
than Perley’s trip on the moving sidewalk afforded. He was not the
only one that had this experience; men, woman and children had like
experiences, some falling flat on their backs; others sat down and
were carried around laughing and laughed at; others would plant
one foot on the moving sidewalk, and keep the other one on the
solid ground, with the result of having their lower limbs drawn apart,
occasioning a fall.
In his novel Oaky (1901), Ellis Proctor Holmes produced Katzenjammer
Kids -like textual comics when he described the ‘regular circus’ Oaky’s
awkward provincial parents managed to create on the moving walkway (pp.
249–251). Not only did both of them tumble to the ground but ‘ma’ bumped
into another man and ended up sitting on his stomach. Ethnic diversity
now entered the narrative. Suffering under ‘ma’s’ heavy weight, the poor
slim fellow, who had a long white beard and wore a white robe, clawed
the air with his hands and muttered: ‘Allah! Allah!’ Meanwhile, ‘dad’ was
desperately trying to run back along the fast track to help ‘ma’, only to ‘butt’
right into a ‘big negro’ (like the ones Oaky had seen at the Dahomeyan
village exhibit). Instead of chopping dad’s head off with a hatchet, the black
man managed to ‘pick dad up in his arms and carry him off of the sidewalks
and set him down’. ‘If there hadn’t been so many other people laughing’,
Oaky thought, ‘I should “a” laughed myself, for it was one of the funniest
sights I’d seen that day.’
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 81
Figure 11 ‘Le Trottoir roulant. Jeu souvenir de l’Exposition Universelle de
1900.’ A board game inspired by the Trottoir roulant. Georges Dreyfus,
Paris, 1900. Author’s collection.
The escapades of Oaky’s parents seem to indicate that the moving walkway
was a site where the international aspect of the exposition came to the
fore, when foreign visitors and foreign exhibits alike tried it out. This idea
is not supported by existing photographic evidence, which rarely shows
non-French and non-Western characters on the platforms. Of course, this
may have been caused by the selections made either by the editors or the
photographers themselves. As a marked contrast to them, a board game
inspired by the Trottoir roulant included many foreign and exotic characters,
but this may have depended on the nature of the product: its producer
probably wanted to make the game board attractive and colorful (see Figure
11).36 A British reporter, who seems to have stayed away from the moving
walkway himself, nevertheless emphasized its cross-cultural appeal:
It has exercised a marvellous attraction over all classes and all nations,
and a most interesting sight it has been to watch the crowds using this
novel mode of locomotion. Rich and poor, young and old, Parisians
and provincials, Americans and Orientals, Arabs and Esquimaux
jostling, walking, falling, laughing, all in the best of humours, it has
been a sight to refresh one indescribably after the serious business of
sightseeing in the Exhibition. (Butler, 1901: 275)
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Most commentators were amused rather than alarmed by the accidents.
Where the introduction of the train more than half a century earlier had
given rise to fears and neuroses, the accidents on the Trottoir roulant were
worth laughing at rather than truly dreadful (Schivelbusch, 1986[1977]: chs
8, 9: 129–149). The fin-de-siècle culture knew many phobias, but the Trottoir
roulant was not really a source for them. Perhaps this had to do with its
nature as a technological extension of walking, a harmless activity. The
users submitted part of the control of their bodies to a machine, but only
a part. This differed from the relationships between workers and machines
at mechanized factories and offices, where the surrender to technology was
total and involuntary. The Trottoir roulant offered a wilful balancing act
between self-control by the human and a motor-driven system; its machinelike elements had been carefully hidden. Much like a game, it was possible
to master it, and to enjoy interacting with it. The thrill was not unlike the
one offered by mechanical attractions at amusement parks, arcades, and
Midways adjoining expositions.
The association of accidents and the Trottoir roulant brings to mind the ‘train
effect’, or stories about panicky reactions to Lumière’s silent film L’Arrivée
d’un train en gare de la Ciotat (1895). Stephen Bottomore (1999) claims that
some spectators reacted viscerally to the train approaching on the screen,
as if it could have protruded into the auditorium. He has also shown that
a widespread discursive tradition grew around this motif. It included films
that commented on reactions to the virtual train, such as Robert W. Paul’s
The Countryman and the Cinematograph (1901) and Edison’s Uncle Josh
at the Moving Picture Show (1902). Their protagonists are country ‘rubes’
who cannot tell the difference between reality and its representation. Similar
figures had appeared much earlier, proving that ‘Uncle Josh’ was a topos, a
stock element recycled within culture.37 Its reappearance around 1900 helped
to negotiate people’s relationship with film, a new medium. Uncle Josh
embodied ridiculous ignorance, an unsophisticated Other. Oaky’s parents
were a manifestation of this topos, country ‘folks’ visiting not just a city, but
one that was in a foreign country and ultra-sophisticated in its manners.
There are differences, however: watching a silent film was risk free,
whereas the possibility of injuring oneself on the Trottoir roulant was real.
Circulating stories about accidents may have added thrill, attracting rather
than repulsing the curious. Still, it was always possible that the person
lying on the platform and being laughed at by strangers would end up
being oneself. Any visitor could become an unwilling real-life Uncle Josh,
a personified topos, an accidental clown with torn clothes, and one’s hat
traveling on its own on the ‘walking road’. Did the prospect of a sudden
collapse of one’s cool and calculated self-image affect the pretentious
façade of the bourgeois society? Could the Trottoir roulant function as a
kind of potential funhouse mirror, teaching lessons about contingency,
vulnerability, and the relativity of values? This might be the hidden message
behind the sensationalist photogravure in Le Panorama 1900 Exposition
Universelle. Still, one suspects that for the French the ‘pile-ups’, whether
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Huhtamo (Un)walking at the Fair 83
real or imagined, were hardly a true challenge to existing social norms. The
seaside resorts and amusement parks on the other side of the Atlantic were
getting much further in democratizing the experiences they offered.
Coda: Moving Walkways and the Denial of Vision
Le Trottoir roulant was a well considered and realized mobility system.
Recalling Hunt’s categories, it accommodated all kinds of users. A processionlike aspect was built into it. One just bought a ticket and submitted oneself
to it. The moving walkway did the rest, carrying the pedestrian through
the city along a predetermined route. It could also be used for a stroll to
reach a destination fast and effectively. Rambling on it was possible as well,
although its appeal was somewhat limited by the need to buy a ticket. Still,
there must have been those who enjoyed loitering without a destination,
just watching the scenery roll by and observing others; perhaps they secretly
expected to see an accident, or to catch a glimpse of some forbidden scene
in a neighboring window. Examples of all these cases can be found in the
photographic documentation, although it is of course impossible to penetrate
the minds and intentions of all those tiny black and white figures. Le Trottoir
roulant functioned as a prosthesis that both provided new possibilities for
mobile visualities and amplified existing ones.
Le Trottoir roulant remained in many ways unique. Many moving walkways
have since been built, but normally for strictly ritual purposes: they transport
people from one spot to another, and normally for a short distance.
Although there are exceptions, such as the scenic underwater conveyors
at Seaworld’s theme parks, most traverse bleak ‘non-places’ (Marc Augé),
for example transit corridors at airports. In 1900, the elevated ‘walking
road’ was envisioned as part of the urban infrastructure. It offered both
practical services and visual–physical enjoyment. In subsequent plans, the
role of vision was often suppressed. A moving walkway Max E Schmidt
hoped to install at Manhattan a decade later ran in a tunnel and was just
an auxiliary to the swelling underground railway network (Shanor, 1988:
102–103). The idea of traveling on benches was revived, indicating that the
walkway would transport exhausted city people, who would probably have
accepted the lack of visual stimuli without paying attention to the whole
issue. Effectiveness was more important than the opportunity of observing
the hustle and bustle of city life.
Even so, a competition for building a system of moving walkways under
the streets of Paris was organized in the 1920s (Meyan, 1923). But
traveling long distances on rolling belts had already become obsolete in
the accelerating ‘dromological’ society (Paul Virilio). The role of walking
was at stake. Already in 1892, Ambrose Bierce discussed the ‘decline and
fall of the American foot’, concluding that ‘nothing is more certain than
that the American variety of it is doomed to a fatal atrophy from disuse in
walking’ (Bierce, 1911[1892]: 115). As evidence, Bierce listed the streetcar, the moving sidewalk, the elevator, and the ‘traveling carpet, carrying
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chairs among the several rooms’. Two decades later, William Inglis (1913:
14) found that ‘the art of walking’ had indeed become a ‘lost art’, adding
the subway, the escalator, and the automobile to the list. To what extent
these apply to the Old Continent is open for debate, but the general trend
was clear: the modern city was not built for the walker, who was tolerated
at best. Le Trottoir roulant announced a future that arrived, but ended up
being less glorious than expected. Moving sidewalks, travelators, escalators,
and other related species became invisible as they became commonplace.
Is there any reason to try to make them visible again?
Notes
1. Friedberg’s article is a good beginning, but only scratches the surface. She
speaks about ‘mobilized visuality’ (p. 263). I prefer ‘mobile visualities’ because
I include walking as well. Friedberg’s essay developed from her earlier
Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (1993), where she outlined
her thinking about bodily mobility and media spectatorship.
2. Tim Ingold (2004) also emphasizes the cultural aspects of walking.
3. ‘Scripted space’ is a concept coined by the cultural critic Norman M Klein (see
Klein, 1998, passim).
4. La Grande Roue de Paris was said to be the only structure visible from behind
the ‘Alps’ (see ‘Exposition Universelle de Paris’, 1900: 181).
5. I have seen a folding fan for the 1867 Paris exposition with a map printed
on it, and a souvenir fan with the exposition map, issued by the pavilion
of Ceylonese tea in 1900 (see http://www.lecurieux.com/epc/Epc0065.htm,
accessed 2 May 2012).
6. The guide suggests the ‘preliminary promenade’ could be used for planning a
‘general programme of sight-seeing’, but also serve as the thing itself for those
who could spare just a day.
7. A total of 47 million entrance tickets were sold (see Picard, 1903).
8. The idea of psychogeography comes from the Situationists and in particular
Guy Debord, who, significantly, developed it in Paris.
9. According to Holmes (1908: 186), who was present, the crowd swept ‘the
protesting gendarmes off their feet’.
10. Chicago’s World’s Fair (1893) was famous for its Midway Plaisance, but in
Paris the ‘attractions’ had been distributed here and there. The word was
used about ‘all the spectacles with an entrance fee within the Exposition area’
(see Guide illustré du Bon Marché. L’Exposition et Paris au Vingtième Siècle,
Picard, 1900: viii).
11. The girls complained about the lack of a Midway Plaisance, which had been at
the Chicago World’s Fair (1893) an
exhaustible resource, a place to go any day, or day after day, where she was
certain to have a jolly time – if not with the donkeys in the Streets of Cairo,
then with the lions at the Circus, or the Ferris Wheel, or wherever else the
whim might lead her. (Insley, 1900: 493–494)
The last expression recalls Dixon’s rambling mode.
12. The photogravures were at first serialized in the illustrated magazine Le
Panorama.
13. The Dreyfus Affair threatened the Paris Exposition (see Friedberg, 2004: 264).
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14. Chinese and Indian runners and filanzanes (which were carried on the shoulders
by long rods, not running on wheels) are also mentioned in Kératry (1900,
section ‘Exposition’, after the main volume, with own page numbering: 16).
15. In Holmes (1901: 252), Sam White engaged in reckless speeding with a
rolling chair by paying its operator double the price. This led to protests that
forced him to look for other means of transportation. This shows he was not
completely free from the insensitive behaviors associated with Americans
abroad.
16. The circle was to operate around the Champ-de-Mars, with a perimeter of
2080 meters. The steam-engine powered system was to stop for 15 seconds
every minute to let people enter and exit (see ‘Projet de train continu pour
l’exposition universelle de 1889’).
17. Friedberg (2004: 265) mistakenly claims that the Trottoir roulant was designed
by Schmidt and Silsbee, adding that they were ‘possibly’ the same men who
engineered the walkway in Chicago.
18. The slower platform made the full circle in 53 minutes (Kératry, 1900, section
‘Exposition’, after the main volume, with own page numbering: 6).
19. A 1908 poem hints that a moving walkway may have operated on the ocean
liner Mauretania (see Mathewson, 1908: 419).
20. A notice about a lantern slide lecture that the pioneer of the field Max E
Schmidt gave about plans to install moving walkways on the Brooklyn Bridge
and elsewhere in the Greater New York, mentioned ‘the traveling freight
roadway in Cleveland, Ohio, at the present time’ (‘Moving Platform for
Passenger Traffic’, 1906: 141).
21. An illustration of the projected ‘walking sidewalk’ published in the World’s
Columbian Exposition Illustrated (1891: 27) imagined it traversing a landscape
with trees and buildings.
22. It had been said that visitors entering by boat could also have used it, but this
is uncertain.
23. The article states that the length was 500 yards (457 meters), 13 feet above the
ground. There were seats for 1488 passengers.
24. The idea was anticipated by the wine merchant and inventor Alfred Speer,
who hoped to install an elevated moving sidewalk above Broadway in
New York. He patented an ‘Endless-Traveling Sidewalk’ in 1871 (US Patent
119,796). The system remained unbuilt (see Shanor, 1988: 95–99).
25. Alisa Goetz (2003: 53) claims (without naming a source): ‘On average, 160,000
passengers per day used the moving sidewalk.’ In 199 days it would have
transported 31,840,000 people, nearly five times the official figure! The official
daily average is 33,437 people.
26. According to www.exposition-universelle-paris-1900.com (accessed 17 May
2012), the total cost of the electric train, including construction and operation,
was 1,385,358.71 francs. The figure for Trottoir roulant was 4,735,000
francs. The figures are from 8 August 1902, the date when the company was
dissolved. The statistics are detailed, but the source is not revealed.
27. An obese man is seen sitting on one of them (on the fast platform!), but only
in a cartoon – the doctor had ordered him to take regular exercise (see La
plate-forme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique, 1900: 10).
28. This is a return to Schmidt and Silsbee’s idea.
29. A mechanical toy by an unknown manufacturer looks like a miniature
carousel. Its design expresses the principle of endless circular motion, but its
long irregular route was missing. An example is in the author’s collection. The
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30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
Trottoir roulant was compared to a colossal manège (carousel) in La plateforme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique (1900: 4).
Maurice Eyquem was a well-known mechanical engineer and hardware
manufacturer, whose premises were on the Boulevard Pereire.
Courteline wrote farces for them (see Toulet, 1991: 28). The play is online at
www.theatregratuit.com (accessed 16 May 2012). Frank Wadleigh Chandler
(1920: 161–162) commented on the play but his description is imprecise.
White also shot an ascent to the Eiffel Tower (Friedberg, 2004: 268–269).
The cinematographic moving pictures at the Paris Exposition were still minor
attractions (see Toulet, 1991). Gunning (1994) analyzed the peripheral role
of early cinema at the St Louis World’s Fair (1904). Lumière also shot a film,
Inauguration de l’Exposition Universelle (1900), showing people traveling
diagonally toward the Cinématographe (and the spectator) on the moving
platforms (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycXunyRyHv0, accessed 29
October 2012).
Similarly, in an illustration on the back cover of La Loire Républicaine 3(25),
24 June 1900, an old lady in a folk costume has slipped and been caught by
an attendant, while her husband (?) is gesticulating wildly in the background.
In the foreground, a girl looks straight at the observer, as in a photograph
(this last representation was used by other illustrators as well).
A cartoon by Jehan Testevuide compared the three platforms to the three ages
of man. This time it is a boy in a sailor’s suit clinging to the post (La plateforme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique, 1900: 9).
Holmes claimed that the fastest platform rolled ‘about as fast as a woman in
tight shoes can run’ (p. 233).
See www.giochidelloca.it/index.php (accessed 29 October 2012). Another
Trottoir roulant board game is also included.
In the context of moving panorama shows as early as in the 1830s, see
Huhtamo (2013: 77–79).
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Erkki Huhtamo is Professor of Media History and Theory at the University
of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Design | Media Arts. He
holds a PhD in Cultural History, and has published extensively on media
archaeology and media arts. Professor Huhtamo’s most recent books are
a large monograph titled Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the
Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (The MIT Press, 2013), and Media
Archaeology: Approaches, Applications and Implications (edited with Jussi
Parikka, University of California Press, 2011).
Address: University of California Los Angeles, Department of Design | Media
Arts, Broad Art Center, Suite 2275, 240 Charles E Young Drive, Los Angeles,
CA 90095-1456, USA. [email: [email protected]]
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