Expo in Paris: the Universal Exposition marking the centenary of the storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution, as well as the 18th anniversary of the Third Republic. The event was financed by state and city funds, with the help of a lottery and the intervention of the Crédit de France banking house. The general direction of the works was entrusted to Adolphe Alphand, the engineer who had participated, under the direction of Baron Haussmann, in the urban redevelopment of Paris commissioned by Napoleon III, carried out between 1852 and 1870. The architectural advisor was Charles Garnier, who had already designed the Paris Opera, while Charles Vigreux was responsible for mechanical and electrical services. The 1889 Paris Expo, in fact, was one of the first events to experiment on a large scale with the use of electricity as an alternative energy source to steam. The Thomas Alva Edison Pavilion, by far the largest in the exposition, attracts 30,000 visitors a day. It occupies half a hectare of the Palais des Machines and centers on a lightbulb of lightbulbs: 20,000 bulbs grouped in the shape of a lightbulb, their light falling on 493 of Edison’s inventions. The tinny voice and music of the phonographs was the sound of a harsh new era, of talking machines and artificial suns, and of the Dieu moderne, technology as God.
