Expo highlights included assassination of President William McKinley and "War of the Currents" between inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla
Above: Night panorama of the Pan-American Exhibition and World's Fair at Buffalo, New York, September 1901. Photo by Phillip Reid. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
It took 110 years for the video to upload, but scenes from the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, are finally on YouTube and ready to go viral.
May 2011 marked the 110th Anniversary of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, which took place May 1 through November 2, 1901. Buffalo celebrated the Centennial anniversary of the event in 2001, but YouTube was not launched until 2005.
Now, for the first time in history, one can actually get a really good look at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition online.
"City of Living Light"
As a Worlds Fair, the Pan-American Exposition was a huge international success, drawing tourists, celebrities, scientists, artists and politicians from around the world to celebrate the dawn of a brand new century. Among those who attended were Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, and (ehem) President William McKinley.
More than 8 million people attended the Exposition at a time when the population of the city of Buffalo was only 350,000.
To people in 1901, electricity symbolized the great strides being made in science. Buffalo was therefore billed as a "City of Living Light" and electricity became the fairs main theme.
Colorful Maps of the Fair Grounds
Several colorful and detailed maps of the fair groundsmay be found at a website constructed by Buffalos Police department. Theyve included photographs of several police uniforms and badges used at the time, plus very detailed guides to the location of President William McKinleys assassination and the house where he died.
The best visual tour online is a 10-minute YouTube video called "Doing the Pan " -- a collection of video clips and photographs set to contemporary music of the times.
A photo gallery of the different buildings at the Expo has been put together by The Buffalonian.
Exhibits
The exposition began with a great parade on May 20. Filmed by Edwin S. Porter, this YouTube clip offers a rare glimpse into a Victorian generation that passed away long ago.
- An Electrical Tower, horticultural gardens, and a Triumphal Bridge;
- An Electricity Building with models of the generators powering the fair;
- Art Exhibitions, including Tiffany stained glass, mosaics and Western sculpture;
- A Temple of Music;
- A Trip to the Moon on board the airship "Luna";
- House Upside Down, an elaborately furnished topsey-turvey residence;
- Cleopatras Temple, as portrayed in several paintings;
- Fair Japan, a miniature Japanese Village
- Dreamland, a mirror maze both confusing and amusing;
- Sham battles at the Cyclorama, including a "Battle of Missionary Ridge"
- An Infant Incubator display, 12 incubators containing live children
- Venice in America, romantic gondola rides through a series of canals;
- Dinosaur skeletons put on display by the Smithsonian Institution;
- Demonstrations of amazing new motion-picture devices, including the Cinematograph, the Vitascope, the Biograph, and the Mutoscope;
- Machines that could telegraph pictures by wire;
- Typewriting with electricity; and
- Demonstrations of a newly developed X-Ray machine that might some day allow doctors to look right through a persons body (The doctors present refused to use the X-Ray machine on President McKinley to look for bullets, because they were not certain of the effects!)
Captured on Film by Edwin S. Porter
Many of the events at the Exposition were caught on film by pioneer movie-maker Edwin S. Porter (1870 - 1941).
Employed by Edison Manufacturing to promote the use of Direct Current lighting (as opposed to Nikola Teslas use of Alternate Current lighting), Porter made two short movies that put the expositions Electrical Tower on vivid display:
Panorama of Esplanade by Night (1901), and
Pan-American Exposition by Night (1901)
Silent films of President McKinleys last speech at the Pan-American Exposition and the crowd outside the Temple of Music shortly after President McKinley was shot may also be seen on YouTube.
3D Stereoscopes of the Exposition
The New York Public Librarys Digital Gallery collection offers online viewing of six stereoscopes taken at the Pan-American Exposition, including a view of the Temple of Music where McKinley was shot. The six pictures are presented as a slideshow.
The Smithsonian Institution organized and oversaw the Exposition for much of 1900, and helped to create displays in 7,500 feet of space. As one might imagine, the Smithsonian has preserved many images in its own digital archives, where one can view materials from many of the original displays.
The Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, which is headquartered in one of the buildings originally built for the Pan-American Exposition, celebrated the 100th anniversay of the 1901 event back in 2001. The Pan-Am Centennial Exhibit "Spirit of the City: Imagining the Pan-American Exposition" is part of the permanent collection of the historical societys museum.
McKinley Assassination
In addition to electricity, two main themes of the Exposition were Peace and Progress.
But all hopes for a happy ending to the Exposition were abruptly shattered on 6 September 1901 when anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States.
A controversial president who had annexed Hawaii and the Philippines, started a war with Spain in 1898 and invaded Cuba, McKinley had just made a speech calling for peace and progress the day before. He was attending an event at the Temple of Music when he was shot at close range.
Because several of his political enemies, including Mark Twain, met at a hotel in Buffalo the night of September 5, many historians speculate that assassin Leon Czolgosz acted as the fall guy for a much larger conspiracy.
Despite all the lights on the outside of the expo buildings, the doctors who operated on McKinley said there were no lights inside the tent where they took the fallen president for surgery. They could not use candles because the ether used to sedate the president was highly flammable. They had to operate by the light reflected from a polished pan.
One bullet was removed easily enough, but the doctors missed a second bullet. The wound became seriously infected. A week after the shooting, McKinley seemed to recover briefly, sat up, took some food and a cup of coffee, then rapidly relapsed and died on September 14, 1901.
He was replaced by his Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, who served in office until 1909.
The War of the Currents
Two ingenius inventors, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, crossed paths at the Exposition. They were rivals, yet they worked together to electrify Buffalo and transformed it into a "City of Living Lights."
As PBS has noted in its program "Tesla: Master of Lightning," Tesla and Edison had been fighting since the 1880s in what is known as the "War of the Currents" -- a heated debate whether AC or DC is the better method for distributing electricity. A great deal of money depended on the outcome. It was therefore quite remarkable to find both men working together on the 1901 Pan-American Exposition.
Edisonscompany provided more than 350,000 incandescent bulbs to line every building on the fair grounds. Tesla provided a three-phase Alternating Current generator at a station 25 miles away in Niagara Falls -- at that time a real miracle of engineering.
For a best-selling book of historical fiction portraying the tense social atmosphere of this period through the eyes of a young school teacher, see the 1999 murder mystery City of Light by Lauren Belfer. A resident of Buffalo, Belfer portrays local scenes and the troubles encountered by single women of the period in vivid and colorful detail.
Electrocution of Cats, Dogs and Topsy the Elephant
In his propaganda efforts to prove that Direct Current was much safer than Teslas Alternating Current, Thomas Edison and his company publically electrocuted cats, dogs, horses and an elephant named Topsy.
Movie-maker Edwin S. Porter even captured the 1903 electrocution of Topsy the Elephant on film. Zoo keepers at Coney Island felt it was necessary to kill Topsy because the elephant had unexpectedly killed three people after an inebriated gentleman fed Topsy a lit cigarette.
Edisons scientific proposal to off Topsy on camera with Alternating Currents seemed a fairly rational and quick solution to a big problem. The film nevertheless outraged many people at the time, as it does today.
Edison Invents Electric Chair
In a little known sub-chapter of history, Thomas Edison also helped to develop the Electric Chair as a "humane" means of executing humans with alternating current. He provided the equipment for the State of New Yorks execution of William Kemmler on August 6, 1890.
The techniciansdidnt quite get it right the first time. After the first jolt of 17 seconds, Kemmler was still struggling. After a second jolt that lasted much longer, smoke began to rise from Kemmlers body as he thrashed and slowly died. The New York Times reporter called it "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging."
McKinleys Assassin Czolgosz Electrocuted
Leon Czolgosz was quickly convicted for the murder of President William McKinley and sent to the electric chair on 29 October 1901.
Thomas Edison stated, for the record, that he felt morally opposed to the death penalty.
However, Mr. Czolgoszs death by electrocution certainly served as a clear demonstration of the health hazards associated with Alternating Current. Edison therefore asked Edwin S. Porter to stage a re-enactment film, " The Execution of Leon Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison," which was released 16 November 1901, only two weeks after the actual execution.
For 2011, Buffalo Promotes Sound and Light Exhibition
This year Buffalo has put together a modest but creative program thats fun for kids.
Theyve launched a 2011 Sound and Light Exhibition on the citys waterfront. To showcase the creative use of alternative energies, they have taken an early 1900s-era Herschell Carrousel for children and transformed it into a Solar Carrousel.
The exhibition also pays tribute to the local Herschell Carrousel factory, which manufactured merry-go-rounds for many years. The production works have now become a popular tourist destination, the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum.
Sources
Flatow, Ira They All Laughed . . . (New York: HarperCollins, 1993) Chapter 3: The War of the Currents, or Let’s "Westinghouse" Him, p. 27 ff.
Whissel, Kristen. " Electricity " from the Encyclopedia of Early Cinema
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