October 3 - The Role of Technology at the Paris Exposition

The moving sidewalk or the “trottoir roulant” as it was also called was popularized at the Paris Universelle Exposition; its practical aim was to transport visitors from the Esplanade des Invalides to the Champs de Mars. Though the moving sidewalk was experienced as being awkward to get on and off of, cinema studies scholar Anne Friedberg writes in her article, “Trottoir Roulant: The Cinema and New Mobilities of Spectatorship," that the apparatus established a “mobilised visuality." An interaction that was very different than the existing experience of looking at a still photograph or a stereograph. She asserts that "mobilised visuality" was new because it actually changed the relation of sight to bodily movement. In an age of expansive industrialism, visitors also ironically became “products” on a conveyor belt, watching and being watched by international spectators. In the article, she includes the following quote from an American reviewer:

“Plentiful means of transportation about the grounds have been devised chiefly between the Champs des Invalides to the Champs de Mars, where on a stretch of a couple of miles, a circular double elevated structure has been provided, accommodating an electric railroad and a double moving sidewalk, one-half of which travels about twice as fast as the other.”

Here is also link to YouTube footage detailing activities at the Paris Universelle 1900. Paris is one of the first places where "moving images", which we take for granted in the 21st century, were first introduced. Friedberg indicates that the opening sequence of this film is the probably films first vertical camera pan. This film was commissioned by Thomas Edison and shot by James Henry White for a film entitled "Panorama of the Eiffel Tower" housed at the Library of Congress.

Note the views (timecode stamp at 1:30) taken from the inside of Paris's iconic Eiffel Tower, which was first unveiled at the 1889 Worlds Fair and how it provides the viewers with a tree-top view of the city: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-4R72jTb74.

Source:

“Trottoir Roulant: The Cinema and New Mobilities of Spectatorship," published in Allegories of Communication: Intermedial Concerns from Cinema to the Digital

(Stockholm Studies in Cinema) edited by John Fullerton and Jan Olsson, Indiana University Press, 2005