The Construction of The White City

Erik Larson's "The Devil in The White City"

Innovations

.::Innovations::.

Many of contemporary society's engineering concepts and models spawn from the Columbian Exposition, and are still used today. The ideas and theories used for many of the engineering achievements were equally hard to build than to conceive. One of the most interesting aspects of the Fair's construction was the actual site which was used for such building. The Jackson Park area in which the feature was built was often denounced as a worthy site because the landscape of the area lacked the firmness in topsoil which was seen to be all important during 1890's construction. D.H. Burnham actually took the site as a challenge employing and bringing together such revolutionary architects and builders, which ultimately led to many, many engineering inventions and innovations. The Columbian Exposition construction workers are the unsung heroes of these engineering feats which were built and integrated in such a way that their usefulness was evident and succinct enough to change the landscape of home and building engineering forever.

The 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition Inventions and Legacies

Some of the inventions in which the Construction Workers helped build and maintain are...

~Intramural Railway - The first elevated electric railway ever built. An exhibit in itself. Power house contained a 2000 horsepower Allis engine with a shaft of 60 tons, 25 feet in width, and 24 inch diameter.

*Seen today through structures such as the Detroit People Mover (DPM), which helps cities to transport a mass amount of citizens safely and with relative order.

~Moveable Sidewalk -A continuous double platform, half moving passengers at 3 miles per hour, the other half at 6 miles per hour.

*Seen today in most all airports as a means to speed up the walk from terminal to terminal.

~Ferris Wheel - The Ferris Wheel was invented for the 1893 fair.

*Seen still as a staple of any fairs/carnival.s

~Gray's Teleautograph -A device that electrically reproduced handwriting at a distance, used to project doorways and windows onto walls in order to ensure design.

*Seen similarly today through projectors used in classroom discussions in which teachers' writing may be magnified and reproduced on screens for note-taking.

~Minature Eiffel Tower - A mini tribute to the tower which was one of the world's largest attractions (could it be upstaged?). The actual engineering feat of the construction was the building of the structure on the swampy and water-laiden land of Chicago's coast.

*This effort to rebuild the tower on less stable ground was more than an engineering feat, but also a kind of a sneer to French engineering, almost implying "We can do you one better!"

Famous Firsts from the fair...

See below to see other innovations introduced at the Fair

Famous First for the Fair...

-Click on any of these images of contemporary "name-brand" products to see its relation to the fair!

ENG 280.001-Chicago Literature (Kowalski)