• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Chains of Consequences: Chicago 1893, Fountain of Modernity

To be fair, the musical side of things is likely to be similar with a New York fair- Joplin was working as an iterant musician in the south before travelling to the Fair, and Dvorak was based in New York himself.

The main difference would probably be a somewhat more old-fashioned outlook from a city that had been a major trade entrepot for so long that it had a degree more self-assurance.
 
To be fair, the musical side of things is likely to be similar with a New York fair- Joplin was working as an iterant musician in the south before travelling to the Fair, and Dvorak was based in New York himself.

The main difference would probably be a somewhat more old-fashioned outlook from a city that had been a major trade entrepot for so long that it had a degree more self-assurance.
I think it's fair to say that international visitors would come away with a different impression - New York, as you say, was well established and already had an international image, whereas Chicago made people sit up and take notice about how rapidly America was building, rebuilding after disaster and expanding. When you think of images like that bit in Tintin in America where they find oil, chase the Indians off their land and then build a city around Tintin literally overnight, I think that sort of imagery started with this. (The San Francisco earthquake recovery also helped, see the quote from HG Wells with which I start The Twilight's Last Gleaming):

But there is no doubt anywhere that San Francisco can be rebuilt, larger, better, and soon. Just as there would be none at all if all this New York that has so obsessed me with its limitless bigness was itself a blazing ruin. I believe these people would more than half like the situation. It would give them scope...there is no sense of accomplishment and finality in any of these things, the largest, the finest, the tallest, are so obviously no more than symptoms and promises of Material Progress, of inhuman material progress that is so in the nature of things that no one would regret their passing.

That, I say again, is at the first encounter the peculiar American effect that began directly I stepped aboard the liner, and that rises here to a towering, shining, clamorous climax. The sense of inexhaustible supply, of an ultra-human force behind it all, is, for a time, invincible.

One assumes...that all America is in this vein, and that this is the way the future must inevitably go...

– H. G. Wells, The Future in America, 1906
 
That's a wealth of things that could easily be changed! And I didn't realise some of those inventions were even the 1890s

what many people consider to be the single greatest of all the World’s Fairs: the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, USA.

I dunno, you didn't mention any very inaccurate dinosaur statues in the parks
 
I saw the title of this article, and thought it could only be more @Thande if he'd recorded it on VHS, then posted it out to random locations around the country, sending Usborne Puzzle Book style clues on a BBC Micro to those who wanted to find a copy.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top