(Un)walking at the Fair: About Mobile Visualities at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900

Abstract

This article is a contribution to urban media archaeology. It sheds light on ‘mobile visualities’ by concentrating on the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. After discussing theories and practices of walking, it focuses on a specific technological prosthesis for the pedestrian: the Trottoir roulant, or the moving walkway that circled the exposition grounds. Even though it was not the first of its kind, the extent, location, and function of the one in Paris made it special. The Trottoir roulant not only connected two major parts of the exposition, but traveled along normal boulevards on an elevated platform. This turned it into a panoramic viewing machine of sorts for observing the city as a spectacle. The article analyzes the materiality and history of the system, but it also discusses its discursive dimensions, such as the ‘accidentalist imagination’ it inspired and the topos traditions it activated. The Trottoir roulant’s relationship to photographic and cinematographic activities at the 1900 fair are also highlighted.

Keywords

mobile media moving walkways Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 Trottoir roulant urban media archaeology visual culture in outdoor spaces world’s fairs

Autrefois, c’était l’homme qui marchait sur le chemin: nous avons si bien dompté la matière que maintenant c’est le chemin qui marche sous l’homme (In old times, humans used to walk on roads. We have mastered it so perfectly that today it is the road that walks under humans).

(Gaston Bergeret, 1901, author’s translation)

How does one visit a world’s fair? The most general answer, ever since the tradition began: by walking. Unprecedented as its scale was, London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition (1851) fitted under the roof of Joseph Paxton’s mighty glasshouse. But walking up and down its aisles was not enough: coaches, trains, omnibuses, and even steamships were needed to reach Hyde Park. As expositions grew, the issue of mobility became more and more pressing. Late 19th-century expositions were huge temporary cities that required special transportation arrangements, as well as navigation tools, such as maps and guidebooks. New modes of mobility were not only practical necessities; they were part and parcel of the ideology of the world’s fair, dedicated to remarkably contradictory goals: nationalism and globalization, mutual understanding and self-interest, culture and commerce, craftsmanship and industrialization. World’s fairs were also about grasping the world visually by means of displaced sights and elaborate simulations.

What roles did the visitors’ movements – physical, mechanical, virtual – play in the world’s fair experience? How did these movements support, enhance, and, perhaps, question visual observations? Except for Anne Friedberg’s (2004: 263–276) pioneering efforts, little has been written about this topic.¹ The task is arduous – official documents record in minute detail how the environments were designed, but except for graphs and statistics, they say little about the individual visitors who crowded them – those anonymous figures who strolled around, sat on benches, lunched, queued up for the pavilions, and rode on the attractions. Some of them were captured in photographs, or scribbled their impressions in postcards, but their mobile and visual routines have evaded the attention of scholars.

I will shed light on the role of mobile visualities by concentrating on the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, one of the most ambitious events of its kind. Its stature was enhanced by its pivotal position between two centuries. The theme of the exposition, as expressed by the general commissioner Alfred Picard (1900: 3, author’s translation), was ‘to be the philosophy and the synthesis of the century’. As a consequence, there were extensive arrays of retrospective exhibits of art and design, as well as huge ‘walk into’ spatial simulations such as Le Village Suisse (the Swiss Village) and Le Vieux Paris (Old Paris), the author–illustrator Albert Robida’s interpretation of Paris as it might have been during past centuries. Yet, aside from summing up the past, the aim was also to demonstrate France’s role in the ‘avant-garde of progress’. This was embodied in exhibits and attractions that pointed toward the future of urbanity. Some of them referred simultaneously to the past and the future, stretching typical 19th-century visual technologies into the dawning new century.

After discussing briefly the case of walking, I will focus on a form that enhanced or displaced it by means of a new technological solution: le Trottoir roulant, or the moving walkway that circled the exposition grounds (see Figure 1). Mobile forms of an era do not exist solely as materialized intentions of authorities, organizers, inventors, and engineers – they also manifest themselves as manifold discourses that envelop and affect them. Official documents, guide- books, and maps provide information about practi- calarrangements, but say little about the thoughts, feelings, and interpretations of those who witnessed the event. We must consult other types of textual and visual evidence to gain clues about how people made sense of their exper- iences while exploring the exposition grounds.

Figure 1

‘Exposition Universelle, 26 Juillet 1900. Le Trottoir Roulant.’ Visitors riding on the moving walkway on 26 July, 1900 during the Paris Universal Exposition. An amateur photograph (?) mounted on card stock. Author’s collection.

Beside Friedberg (2004), this article has been inspired by John Urry (2007), whose Mobilities offers a ‘wide-ranging analysis of the role that movement of people, ideas, objects and information plays in social life’ (p. 17). I find Urry’s notion of ‘mobility-system’ useful for my purposes. As he explains, each form of mobility presupposes ‘a “system” (in fact many such systems)’ that ‘provide “spaces” of anticipation’ and permit predictable and relatively risk-free repetition of the movement in question’ (pp. 12–13). Urry emphasizes that mobility-systems ‘need to be understood in terms of the social relations that surround and implicate them’ (p. 10), which I readily endorse. A world’s fair is a complex of intersecting and overlapping systems, designed to maintain smooth operation flows to prevent accidents, congestion, and frustration (to avoid encumbering the flow of money). Mobilities are part of such ‘systems of systems’, dynamically interconnected with publicity, ticket sales, catering, security, and other systems. It is such a dense ‘garden of forking paths’ each visitor traverses, negotiating one’s experience on the go.

Walking Through Scripted Spaces

In her history of walking, Rebecca Solnit (2000: 63) refused to treat her topic as something self-evident, comparing it with culture:

We tend to consider the foundations of our culture to be natural, but every foundation had builders and an origin – which is to say that it was a creative construction, not a biological inevitability.²

This applies well to the world’s fair, a highly ‘scripted’ space.³ The visitors’ movements are part of the overall design. Their steps are as if taken in advance, routes trodden, maps and guidebooks printed, and signs posted. It is only within this premeditated and controlled space that the visitors are allowed to move. The world’s fair is a thoroughly semiotic construct. Its innumerable signs are related to authoritative codes the visitors are expected to master and obey.

Of course, people don’t always do what they are told. They make their own decisions, change their minds, follow a moment’s fancy. In other words, they negotiate between what is required and what one wants to do. When the American travel lecturer Burton Holmes was exploring the huge immersive realm of Le Village Suisse, he escaped from ‘the watchful eye of the policeman’ and engaged in an act of transgression:

We climb the fence and wander up this tempting valley, and then, turning, we gaze up at the beetling crags, only to find beyond an Alpine range, a startlingly substantial ‘rainbow’ formed by the periphery of the Big Wheel. (Holmes, 1908: 287–291)⁴

As a seasoned and sarcastic observer, Holmes derived pleasure from witnessing the sudden appearance of La Grande Roue de Paris, a giant Ferris Wheel, from behind the ‘Artificial Alps’. Breaking the rules made a calculated visual illusion collapse. Although most visitors were likely more servile, the basic principle holds: mobility systems are not only used as intended – they are tested, re-interpreted, and even re-functionalized.

John Dixon Hunt’s (2003) theory of movements through gardens – another scripted space – provides a model that helps us to make sense of the relationships between spaces and the practices of moving through them. Hunt identifies three modalities: procession or ritual, stroll, and ramble. Procession or ritual follows a preordained path or purpose, pre-imposed on the visitor. Stroll and ramble involve personal initiative-taking; the former has a goal and purpose, whereas the latter is free roaming without preordained routes or destinations. The procession/ritual is evidently preferred by world’s fair’s organizers, because it serves their quest for control. It manifests itself not only as guided tours and special events, but also in the structure of the fair with its routes, sign systems, and security guards. Even ephemeral giveaways, such as paper fans with maps of the exposition printed on them, support the predefined ritualistic of the visit.⁵

Stroll and ramble can never be completely free from constraints. Procession transforms itself into stroll and back again, if the visitor keeps deviating from suggested routes to follow his or her own interests. In Paris, this may have happened to those who used a guidebook named American Cicerone, which contained a detailed itinerary for speed-visiting the exposition in two days (Kératry, 1900, section ‘Exposition’, after the main volume, with own page numbering: 9–21). Overseas guests consulting a copy of Harper’s Guide to Paris and the Exposition of 1900 were urged to begin their visit with a ‘preliminary promenade’ through the exposition grounds, ‘on foot in about three hours’ time’ (p. 42).⁶ There is no way to tell how many of the millions who entered through the entrance gates were ready for such rituals.⁷ Many may have followed the itineraries part of the way, modifying them according to their own interests, whimsies, and states of fatigue. As they moved around, the visitors drew their own ‘psychogeographies’ over a pre-mapped terrain.⁸ Countless idiosyncratic maps, all different and yet all strangely reminiscent of each other, were drawn by animated feet at any one time.

Verifying speculations like these by tracing the movements of actual visitors is not easy because the evidence is so fragmentary – mere glimpses of what may have been patterns. In Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Edward Insley (1900) examined the habits of American visitors, contrasting their informal manners with the formal conduct of the French. Guidebooks routinely pointed this out, urging the Americans to adjust their behaviors by observing their hosts. An incident that was widely reported and even distributed as a stereoview was the ‘democratic avalanche’ at the opening of the American Pavilion. A crowd of young Americans, ‘pretty girls and pretty frocks’, determined to take part in the opening ceremony and believing they were allowed to do so, ‘swept the French police out of [their] way with a disdain and imperiousness that left them helpless and stupefied’ (p. 490).⁹ A clash between culturally determined behavioral codes took place.

According to Insley, Americans were looking for pleasure, which made them gravitate toward Rue de Paris, a concentration of small theatres and other attractions by the Seine. They found it unnecessary to enter the shows; watching street artists and barkers was enough: ‘This free “théatre en plein air” is really more interesting than the others which the spectators pay to see’ (p. 493).¹⁰ Insley concluded that ‘most Americans who have come to the gay capital for the first time this year are inclined to regard the Moulin Rouge as Paris and side-shows as the Exposition’ (p. 492). Their attitudes may have been motivated by the codes of tourism, a poor command of French, and the desire to save money (an issue constantly raised in texts about the exhibition: the entrance fee was only the tip of a mounting monetary iceberg). An American named RN Willcox (1900), who self-published an account of his visit, used either a hired guide or a guidebook, but ignored the nature of many exhibits (Willcox, 1900: 70). On the subject of the spectacular panoramic attraction Le Tour du Monde (see Figure 2), he only said that ‘there are many fine painting [sic] on exhibition, and should be seen to be appreciated’ (p. 70). Characterizing the Tyrolian Pavilion flatly as ‘very pretty’, and the Transatlantic Panorama and the ‘Meorama’ (should read ‘Maréorama’) as ‘famous for their exact representations’ gives an impression that he did not enter them at all (p. 68).

Figure 2

Visitors in front of the pavilion that housed Louis Dumoulin’s massive panoramic attraction Le Tour du Monde. The eclectic building was designed by Alexandre Marcel. From Baschet (1900, no page numbers). Author’s collection.

It is tempting to suggest that the Americans’ dominant modes of mobility were stroll and ramble (or their combinations), whereas they had little patience for procession. Yet, Insley claimed that, in spite of her lust for amusements, ‘The American Girl’ – unlike her phlegmatic brother, who remained indifferent – explored the exhibits with her Baedeker and formed opinions of them.¹¹ In his amusing novel Oaky, the Son of His Dad (1901), the Harvard-educated dentist Dr Ellis Proctor Holmes added another contrary indicator. Possibly using his own first-hand experiences as an inspiration, Holmes depicts in lively detail the adventures of a group of Americans at the Universal Exposition of 1900. One of them is a self-made man named Sam White, who has made a fortune in the gold-mining business. Instead of rambling, he plans each day’s targets carefully by marking them on a map. His main destination is the Palace of Mining and Metallurgy, where he goes to learn tips for his trade (Holmes, 1901: 251–253). Fiction is fiction, and discursive fragments are just that, fragments, but at least they warn us against unwarranted generalizations.

Local visitors enjoyed the privilege of being able to visit multiple times. Accounting for their movements is not easy. Numerous photogravures collected in the handsome album Le Panorama 1900 Exposition Universelle (Baschet, c. 1900) seem to indicate that they preferred combinations of procession and stroll.¹² Page after page, we see well-dressed visitors calmly exploring the grounds and the pavilions. Yet, it is evident that the photographs have been retouched: figures have been added and rearranged. They communicate an idealized vision, rather than the thing an Sich. Absences are significant. It is striking to discover practically no children, lower-class people, or identifiable foreigners. Until the very end – as we will see later – there are no glimpses of the reckless and colorful spirit of le gai Paris, with the flâneur, a prototypical ‘rambler’, as one of its corollaries. The album persuades us to believe that the exposition was a Belle Epoque affair for the wealthy; an event where the French bourgeoisie celebrated its achievements in style and comfort. It is less a direct document than an ideological effort to erase difference, fill in cracks, and to lighten up the dark shadows cast by the Dreyfus Affair.¹³

Le Trottoir roulant as a Mobility-System

Walking was the main mode of roaming the exposition grounds, but as Harper’s Guide to Paris and the Exposition of 1900 added as a caveat to its three-hour ‘preliminary promenade’, those ‘not desirous of undertaking so long a walk’ could hire ‘bath chairs or other similar vehicles’. Indeed, ‘rolling chairs’ (fauteuils roulants) with operators pushing them were offered for rent. Around the colonial exhibits of the Trocadéro area there were rickshaws and filanzanes as exotic alternatives (see The Century Dictionary, 1914).¹⁴ Such mobile prostheses had limited appeal at the 1900 exposition, partly because of high prices, partly because of limited areas where they operated.¹⁵ More robust solutions were needed because the exposition was divided into sections that were far apart. On the left bank of the Seine, there was a concentration of pavilions around the Esplanade des Invalides. A narrow strip of pavilions along the river connected it with the main part of the exposition at the Champ-de-Mars (around the Eiffel Tower). Between these areas there was just ordinary city with boulevards, shops, bars, and apartment buildings.

The organizers intended to connect these areas with an electric railway running along a circular track (Picard, 1903: 219–286, see Figure 3). The competition they organized was won by a combinatory solution: the engineer Charles Cavelier de Mocomble (representing the system Blot-Guyenet-de Mocomble) proposed a moving walkway running next to the electric railway (chemin de fer électrique), but in the opposite, counterclockwise direction. Both were to cover approximately the same distance (roughly 3300 meters), and operate on top of elevated viaducts. The jury found several advantages. The double system would be effective – the Trottoir roulant could transport even more passengers than the railway. As a novelty, the moving walkway would ‘seduce’ visitors and become one of the landmarks of the exposition. By positioning it on top of a viaduct it could be run above existing streets; demolishing buildings or cutting down trees would be unnecessary. Entrances to the platform could be added where needed, and the nearest pavilions could be accessed without having to descend to the street level (Picard, 1903: 225–226).

Figure 3

A chromolithographic trade card for Chocolat Iblet, depicting the moving walkway planned for the Universal Exposition of 1900 (characterized as ‘La Plate-Forme Mobile du Champ-de-Mars’). The card must have been produced beforehand, because the realized Trottoir roulant did not circle the Champ-de-Mars, reaching only its eastern side. Author’s collection.

The idea of the moving walkway was not new. Several patents had been granted since the 1870s, including one for Blot in 1886. An engineer named Eugène Hénard had suggested for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889 a free ‘continuous train’, a moving platform circling the exposition area. The users could have walked or stood on the platform which was on ground level, or sat on moving ‘balconies’ erected above it.¹⁶ It was not built, and so the American engineers Schmidt and Silsbee (applying a system patented by the German Rettig brothers in 1889) became the first to realize a functioning moving walkway at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. They exhibited a follow-up version at the Berliner Gewerbe-Austellung (the Berlin trade exhibition) in 1896. Instead of copying their system, Blot, Guyenet and de Mocomble introduced improvements that made their system more flexible and reliable, and easier to service even when it was running (Corthell, 1899).¹⁷ The railway and the walkway had their own viaducts. The latter circulated at the even height of 7 meters, whereas the former’s tracks were positioned lower, and ascended and descended between its five ground-level stations (see Figure 4). Understandably, it was compared with ‘Russian mountains’ (pleasure railways popular at fairgrounds) (Quantin, 1900: 334). Each of the small trains had three carriages, carrying a total of 200 passengers. During peak hours, the trains could run every two minutes. The moving walkway, which was erected on an iron viaduct, was divided into three parallel platforms. On the outer edge, there was a stationary platform; next to it, a slow platform moving about 1 meter per second; next to it, a fast platform moving at about twice that speed. The slow platform was meant to facilitate stepping on the fast platform and off again. To make boarding and descending easier, metal posts that moved with the platforms were erected at regular intervals. The system had 172 A/C motors powered by a purpose-built independent power station (La plate-forme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique. Programme hebdomadaire de l’exposition, 1900: 9).

Figure 4

‘Le Trottoir Roulant & le Chemin de Fer Électrique, Perspective de l’Avenue de la Bourdonnais.’ Large photographic albumen print by Neurdein frères, Paris, 1900. The scene depicts the moving walkway and the electric railway at the south-east corner of le Champ-de-Mars, in front of the imposing La Galerie des Machines. Avenue de la Bourdonnais is seen leading into the distance. Author’s collection.

The fast track of the moving walkway made the full circle in about 25 minutes, while the railway, traveling at 16 km/h, took only 12 minutes (clockwise).¹⁸ The systems were described as mirror images of each other. The Trottoir roulant was imagined as an enormously long train placed upside-down with its wheels rolling. The moving platform seemed to be placed on top of the wheels. As in a fantasyland where everything is inverted, the tracks, not the train, were in locomotion (pp. 5–6). The double system was also explained to reflect the separation between intermittent and continuous modes of transportation (Picard, 1903: 256). Coaches, trams, and ships operated intermittently: they came and went at regular or irregular intervals.¹⁹ Conveyors and chutes with water wheels were continuous. They had been already used for transporting raw material or goods in mines and factories.²⁰ Replacing inanimate things with humans promised a transportation revolution.

The train and walkway combination was a first, but the elements that made a real difference were its extent, location, and function. Schmidt and Silsbee’s walkway in Chicago had been installed on a long pier extending into Lake Michigan.²¹ Leading nowhere, it was a pleasure ride rather than a utility. The rows of benches covering the fast track identified it as a kind of continuous open-air train (Windsor, 1893: 550).²² Commenting on the version shown in Berlin in 1896, Engineering Mechanics (1896: 193) stated: ‘The necessity for its use in our larger cities has not yet reached the point where capital is attracted to its introduction.’²³ In Paris, a step was taken in this direction. The walkway in Berlin was only 500 yards (457 meters) long, and merely connected two destinations (a pleasure park and Alt-Berlin, or ‘Old Berlin’) within the exhibition. The one in Paris was over six times longer and circled above a great metropolitan city.²⁴ As Insley (1900: 494) remarked, ‘this one … actually goes somewhere and is of some real utility.’ In Paris, the seats were left out. Making the users walk or stand made them feel like pedestrians, emphasizing true urban mobility over a pleasure ride.

It was estimated that the Trottoir roulant could have transported 96,000,000 passengers during the 199 days of the exposition (La plate-forme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique, 1900: 15). The results were a far cry from the estimate: between 16 April and 12 November, ‘only’ 6,654,002 people bought full-price tickets for the moving walkway, while the electric railway transported 2,635,867 people (Picard, 1903: 254).²⁵ Considering the huge amount of attention the double system received, these figures must have disappointed the stockholders of the Compagnie des Transports Electriques de l’Exposition. The Trottoir roulant’s loss was nearly 500,000 francs. Although the electric railway made a profit of over 172,000 francs (partly because of its lower overall expenses), the company’s loss was over 327,500 francs. Each shareholder lost 55 percent of the initial investment.²⁶ The system was not to blame; it operated without major problems. Only two minor accidents (a sprained foot and an electric shock) were recorded on the electric railway and just 43 incidents on the moving walkway, all involving people who had lost their balance (the most serious cases being fractures suffered by two elderly persons) (Picard, 1903: 253, 283).

The most likely explanation for the failure was the ticket price. A single ticket cost 50 centimes for the moving walkway and 25 centimes for the electric railway. Such prices did not encourage repeated use. Had the Trottoir roulant been a free service, the number of users would probably have been much higher. Quantin (1900: 333–334) wondered if the elimination of seats had played a role, but admitted that the possibility of being seated had not increased the use of the electric railway. As a response to such concerns, folding chairs were available for rent. They could be used on the moving platforms as well, but the price was again too high: two francs. Such chairs are not visible in any of the photographs I have seen.²⁷ Toward the end of the exposition, when the novelty value of the moving walkway had run dry, 50 garden benches with sun shades were installed on the fast track, and are said to have been used actively (Picard, 1903: 268–269).²⁸

Speeding Past Your Window, or Panoramas and Privacy

Les fleuves, disait Pascal, sont des chemins qui marchent. Les curieux qui viennent visiter l’Exposition y découvrent un chemin qui marche et qui n’est point un fleuve (Pascal once said that rivers are roads that walk. Curious visitors will discover at the Universal Exposition a road that walks, but is not a river). (Le Livre d’Or de l’Exposition de 1900: 47, author’s translation)

A reporter covering the Paris exposition for the British Art Journal observed the Trottoir roulant from the street below. He could not hide his enthusiasm:

The effect, from the street below, was an extraordinary one: endless crowds of people were seen being swiftly carried along, a few who were walking had the effect of skaters rapidly and easily skimming past the rest. All seemed to be travelling in a manner which the tired pedestrian looked upon with envy. In brief, the Moving Pavement was a success. It afforded a new sensation, endless amusement, much rest and relaxation. It was useful, and not unornamental. Its promoters may be satisfied that they provided the Exhibition with a most novel and characteristic feature. (Butler, 1901: 276)

For those who climbed to the viaduct, the Trottoir roulant offered sensory-motor experiences that cannot be summed up by a simple formula. The fact that it was considered a novelty and received mostly with enthusiasm cannot be doubted. It was declared the clue of the exposition, and was perpetuated in countless photographs, magazine illustrations, and picture postcards. Lumière and Edison shot films on it. Auguste Darcaigne composed an Allegro-Caprice (c. 1900) inspired by the Trottoir roulant, which was released as sheet music to be played by piano at home. Even board games and mechanical toys (see Figure 5) were produced as mementos for those who wanted to re-enact the experience afterwards in privacy (if it could be re-enacted at all).²⁹ There were also many published descriptions; at least some of them reflected the writer’s own experiences. The enterprise may have failed financially, but the exposition organizers must have been pleased; they got what they wanted in the form of a huge amount of publicity.

Figure 5

Trottoir roulant Paris 1900 – mechanical game by unknown French manufacturer, c. 1900. By turning the wheel (right) with a wooden stick, the figures are made to move forward on the rotating platforms. The one that reaches the French flag first is the winner. This rare game apparatus is an adaptation of mechanical tabletop horse-riding games. It also evokes the carousel. Author’s collection.

It was not uncommon to compare the scenes the travelers witnessed to a panorama. Le Livre d’Or de l’Exposition de 1900 captioned one of its photographs ‘Le Panorama du Trocadéro, vu du Tottoir [sic] roulant’ (The Panorama of Trocadéro, seen from the Moving Walkway’, p. 48), emphasizing this association. Trocadéro is seen in the background, while a crowd of people on the Trottoir roulant fills the foreground. The association can be partly explained by the elevated structure, which must have recalled the central viewing platforms of circular panorama buildings (massive examples of which, such as the Panorama Transatlantique and the Panorama de Madagascar, were included in the 1900 exposition). Establishing this connection, a guidebook emphasized how the travelers on the Trottoir roulant were able to admire ‘from the top of the balcony the details of the panorama offered to their eyes’. However, it continued: ‘… or to reach as quickly as possible any part of the circuit’ (Kératry, 1900: section ‘Exposition’, after the main volume, with own page numbering: 6). This remark adds another aspect to the comparison.

In a panorama rotunda, visitors walked around on the viewing platform to see all aspects of the circular painting, which remained static. As the Trottoir roulant speeded passengers toward their destinations, the scenes they witnessed seemed to be in motion. An American engineer expressed this succinctly: ‘The aerial disposition [of the viaduct] … permits a complete tour of the Exposition and furnishes travelers with extremely varied panoramic views’ (Corthell, 1899: 320). The Trottoir roulant turned a vibrant city into a panoramic visual spectacle, where each ‘scene’ was a kinetic ‘living picture’. The immediacy of the view was enhanced by the lack of walls and windows; the moving walkway was no train. The situation could be likened to a ‘moving panorama’ (another popular spectacle), but not directly: in the latter, it was a picture roll that moved, while the spectators remained stationary. Rarely were there picture rolls unfolding on both sides – the most spectacular example of all was shown at the 1900 exposition, a short stroll from the nearest exit of the Trottoir roulant. Hugo d’Alési’s Le Maréorama was a simulated sea voyage, where the spectators walked around a hydraulically swayed boat deck, while two giant rolls of painted canvas rolled past on both sides (see Huhtamo, 2013: 313–317).

The satirist Gaston Bergeret, who wrote a delightful little book titled Journal d’un nègre à l’exposition de 1900 (1901), suggested that, as each successive exhibition grew bigger and bigger, the city and the exposition were increasingly interconnected (p. 5). One day Paris itself would be the exposition. Le Trottoir roulant materialized this idea because, for about half of its trajectory, it ran outside the exposition area along the Avenues de la Bourdonnais and Motte-Piquet. The viaduct stood in front of many apartment windows, which gave Bergeret’s narrator (a black man as ‘the other’) an opportunity to assure the reader that he was very ‘pleased’ with the Trottoir roulant, because it gave visitors with no acquaintances in the city an opportunity to peek into the apartments of the Parisians, and to get familiar with their habits. He ‘regretted’ that so many unpatriotic inhabitants, in a ‘spirit of defiance’, keep their windows closed during the walkway’s operating hours. Should not the apartment buildings along the Avenue de la Bourdonnais really be considered part of the exposition?, he wondered (Bergeret, 1901: 42–43).

Within the urban panorama, windows were ‘peepshows’ displaying glimpses of interior life. To what extent Bergeret’s quips were inspired by contemporary chatter is difficult to estimate. According to Burton Holmes (1908: 235–236), who had come to Paris to collect material for his illustrated magic lantern lectures, as the moving walkway passed ‘through a busy street on a level with the second-story windows’, it opened ‘new and tempting opportunities for flirtatious Frenchmen’. He noticed an attractive woman waving her hand in a window – only to discover that it was a life-size cutout figure with a ‘waxen smile’ (see Figure 6) and an artificial moving hand: an advertising display for Appareils Eyquem.³⁰ Was it inspired by the practice of exhibiting oneself in a window? The Parisian bordello business must have wanted its own share of the capital flows swelled by the exposition, but would it have resorted to such strategies? Be that as it may, outdoor advertising was prominent in the city of Jules Chéret and Hugo d’Alési, whose colorful posters gained both praise and disgust. Urban wallpaper was admired, but also considered an affront to refined taste and the freedom of the eye to roam freely.

Figure 6

‘Waxen Smiles’, from Burton Holmes (1908: 235).

The playwright Georges Courteline (1858–1929) suggested that citizens forced to live next to the Trottoir roulant had their privacy violated. He focused on this issue in L’Article 330, a satirical one-act farce, which was probably performed at the Grand Guignol Theater in the Rue de Paris area of the exposition.³¹ The play’s protagonist, a middle-aged bourgeois named Jean-Philippe La Brige, has the misfortune of living at 5bis Avenue Motte-Piquet, in front of the Plate-forme mobile. He is summoned to court by no less than 13,687 people, who accuse him of indecent behavior: a bare bottom had been exposed from his second-floor apartment. The action takes place in a courtroom, where La Brige, a ‘defensive philosopher’, tries to justify his behavior, claiming that people not only peeped into his bedroom and made comments about his apartment, but also threw in cherry stones, peanuts, olives, and pumpkin seeds. The transportation company, the exhibition administration, and the city of Paris had all turned a deaf ear to La Brige’s complaints. The court shows no sympathy either and sends him to prison. Thus, the system triumphs over the individual.

The moving walkway’s threat to private life was expressed in a curious anecdote about the American ambassador. Tired of giving endless speeches at the exposition, he is said to have suggested: ‘Why not prepare one speech, and deliver it in a continuous burst of eloquence, from the Plate-Forme Mobile?’ (Holmes, 1908: 239–240). Absurd as this idea is, such ‘declamation in motion’ anticipates the inescapable political and commercial patter in modern society, amplified by ubiquitous media channels. Indirectly, it highlights another source of annoyance: the noise caused by the system and its users. Capitalist interests were overriding the rights of the citizen. Mildred Minturn (1906: ix–x), who translated Jean Jaurès’ Studies in Socialism, used the moving walkway as a metaphor to illustrate the workings of the private ownership of capital. While ‘nine tenths of the human race walk on their own feet and go fast or slow according to the strength they have and the effort they put forth’, she argued, the remaining one tenth ‘are able to jump on to the moving sidewalk, or are deposited there by the effort or favour of others’. Some of them manage to jump from the slow to the faster track: ‘These are the men who have manipulated their share of wealth-producing wealth with most success.’

Picture Taking on the ‘Walking Road’

At the turn of the century, snapshot photography was still relatively recent, but growing numbers of people had adopted it as a hobby since the beginning of the roll film era in the 1880s. Burton Holmes (1908: 312) explained that ‘although cameras are admitted free, there is a tax of five dollars [25 francs] daily for the use of tripods in the grounds.’ Handheld cameras were tolerated as part of the exposition experience. The modest quality of the results made them more likely to end up in private albums rather than for public exploitation. But even with the very expensive permit, tripods were forbidden after 1 pm. The tripod indicated a professional photographer or serious amateur worth controlling. Regulating its use was no doubt meant to assure the smooth circulation of visitors, protecting their privacy and pre-empting complaints. The commercial interests of the exhibitors were also safeguarded. It was promptly stated that no object was to be photographed or a picture reproduced without the exhibitor’s consent (see ‘Photographes et photographie’, Guide illustré du Bon Marché: x).

Quite a few photographs taken on the moving walkway were published (see Figure 7), and many others must lie buried in private albums. What did the mechanical eye capture? The majority of the ones I have seen concentrate on the moving walkway and the people riding on it, rather than on the ‘panoramic’ scenery surrounding it. For the photographers, the Plate-forme mobile with its users was the principal attraction. In a typical shot, the platform is seen extending into the distance, creating a deep perspectival space. This was a perfect situation for stereoscopic photographs, and some were indeed taken. Normally there are people standing on the platforms. They are often, but not always, depicted from behind. Although frozen, such compositions enhance the sense of motion, drawing the viewer into the scene, prompting the gaze to follow the shadowy figures into the distance. Such compositions may have been motivated by an effort to safeguard the privacy of the subjects, or, perhaps, by the ‘snapper’s’ shyness.

Figure 7

‘Souvenir de l’Exposition – sur le pont Roulant.’ Stereoscopic postcard, 1900, showing the Trottoir roulant at Quai d’Orsay, next to the Italian Pavilion. Pont Roulant (‘Rotating bridge’) is a variant rarely encountered in contemporary documents about the Trottoir roulant. Author’s collection.

The opposite trope can also be discovered: people riding toward the photographer. There are well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, children, and elderly people as well. Some of them are walking or trying to change platform, while others are standing still, occasionally leaning against the fence (which moved with the fast track). In one impressive shot, a group of ladies visiting from the seaport of Boulogne are seen moving toward the photographer, each wearing the distinctive circular hat of the region. In one photograph (in La plate-forme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique, 1900: cover, 13) a cyclist is even seen on the fast track, but one wonders if that is a stunt (bicycles were not allowed on the exposition grounds, see ‘Trottoir Roulant, la Gare du Pont des Invalides’, nd, photo c. 1900). These two tropes correspond with ones seen in early moving pictures, and are present in the short films the Edison cameraman James H White shot on the Trottoir roulant (Friedberg, 2004: 265–266).³² He filmed either from the stationary platform, or traveled with his camera on the slower track. Where the films differ from the photographs is in their livelier quality. Jumping from platform to platform is often seen, with people acknowledging the camera, either spontaneously or in a premeditated manner.

Cinematography was capable of capturing the experience better than photography, the art of the frozen moment. Still, with a techno ground moving under their feet, the practitioners of both media were put in precarious situations. A cartoon shows an amateur photographer preparing to snap a shot of an elegant couple. All are standing safely on the fast platform (see Figure 8). He asks his subjects to freeze, takes a step back to frame his composition – and lands on the slower platform. Of course, the photographer and his camera go topsy-turvy. A cartoon cannot prove that similar things actually happened; it can only refer to the possibility, and to the presence of the notion in the imagination. The cartoon could quite as well be read just as a manifestation of a topos encountered many times earlier – the mishaps of photographers (see Huhtamo, 2008). Instead of a bull or a jealous husband attacking the unsuspecting photographer, it is his accidental physical subordination to a machine in motion that upsets his normal equilibrium.

Figure 8

‘Épreuve d’Amateur’ (An Amateur’s Snapshot), a cartoon by Jehan Testevuide (La plate-forme mobile et le chemin de fer électrique, 1900). Author’s collection.

The otherwise subdued publication Le Panorama 1900 Exposition Universelle closed with a ‘snap-shock attraction’: an elderly lady, who has tried to step on the moving platform, has been captured by the photographer in mid-air, falling straight on her back, her arms stretched out and a silent scream on her lips (see Figure 9). In a fraction of a second she will hit the back of her head against the fence; a serious injury or possibly death will occur. A man is rushing for help – too late! – while a younger lady, riding safely on the fast platform, turns and giggles heartily at her misfortune. Other travelers pay no attention. Another lady makes a successful leap in the background. The caption praises the charms of the ‘“walking road” … that dominated the exposition’, emphasizing the pleasure of passing from one platform to another ‘with a light and gracious leap that sometimes leads to a fall not at all dangerous’. A few deadpan lines of statistics about the moving walkway and the exposition follow. What on earth is going on here?

Figure 9

‘Le Trottoir Roulant’, manipulated photograph, from Baschet (c. 1900, final page).

The small print does its best to emphasize the verisimilitude of the picture by stating that the ‘photographic plate [was] obtained with Zeiss-Krauss objectives’. However, a closer look reveals that what we see is a cut-and-paste affair, a photomontage. Although some of the figures may have been part of the original photograph, the accident has been staged in ‘postproduction’. Freezing the moment was the forte of photography, but a camera eye would not have been able to capture such a fleeting scene. The accident is the result of deliberate design, and so is the decision to position the plate as the closing ‘treat’, followed only by a kind of bonus – a long folding panorama depicting the row of national pavilions along the left bank of the Seine. Is this sensationalist photogravure meant just to give the publication a ‘lighter’ finish (like some television newscasters do), or is there a hidden agenda that can be teased out from its fairly well but not perfectly hidden seams?

The Accidentalist Imagination

The motive of accidents on the Trottoir roulant came up over and over again in both texts and in graphic illustrations. The latter gave opportunities for more dramatic scenes than photographs (the example just discussed notwithstanding). The Graphic (23 June 1900: 919) published a lithograph ‘drawn from life’ by Paul Benouard, depicting the aftermath of a very similar incident (see Figure 10).³³ The victim is a stocky elderly lady. Someone has bent down to help her and an attendant is rushing to the scene, but the excited crowd pays little attention. A girl is swinging playfully from platform to platform, grasping a post with both hands, while another attendant is offering his arm to a pretty young lady.³⁴ The caption speaks about ‘a slight mishap’, adding nonchalantly that ‘occasionally nervous people find a little difficulty in adapting themselves to the traveling pathway’.

Figure 10

‘A Slight Mishap on the Moving Platform at the Paris Exhibition.’ Illustration ‘drawn from life’ by Paul Benouard (The Graphic, 23 June: 919). Author’s collection.

In a patronizing tone, Burton Holmes (1908: 233–235) claimed that stepping from the stationary platform to the mobile ones required ‘little skill’, but ‘nine women out of ten, with that innate feminine impulse to face the wrong way, found it impossible to effect a change of base without a stumble and a shriek’.³⁵ In support of his argument, Holmes snapped a photograph, in which a girl is seen trapped between the slow and the fast platform, holding onto different posts with both hands and virtually being ‘torn apart’. This is how Holmes analyzed what he saw: ‘Many of [the women], once upon the moving platform, remained transfixed, clutching a post, irrevocably swept on until rescued by some uniformed attendant’ (p. 235, photograph on p. 234).

Countering Holmes’s male chauvinism, the cover of the sheet music edition of Darcaigne’s Le Trottoir Roulant depicts an independent-looking and joyful young lady leaning against the fence of the fast platform in full command of the situation, her skirt and muffler flapping in the breeze.

Others ascribed similar problems to both sexes and different age groups. The American Josiah Staunton Moore (1901: 186) described the perils of his travel companion J Vincent Perley and others in a lively manner:

Perley made an attempt to get on. He caught hold of a post of the fast sidewalk with one hand and a post of the slow sidewalk with the other. In a second he was drawn out to his full length. He is very tall and thin, but he looked longer and thinner than ever. After he had been pulled nearly in two, he let go one of the posts; his umbrella and hat went on at five miles an hour, whilst his body followed at two miles an hour. I don’t think I ever had a more enjoyable laugh than Perley’s trip on the moving sidewalk afforded. He was not the only one that had this experience; men, woman and children had like experiences, some falling flat on their backs; others sat down and were carried around laughing and laughed at; others would plant one foot on the moving sidewalk, and keep the other one on the solid ground, with the result of having their lower limbs drawn apart, occasioning a fall.

In his novel Oaky (1901), Ellis Proctor Holmes produced Katzenjammer Kids -like textual comics when he described the ‘regular circus’ Oaky’s awkward provincial parents managed to create on the moving walkway (pp. 249–251). Not only did both of them tumble to the ground but ‘ma’ bumped into another man and ended up sitting on his stomach. Ethnic diversity now entered the narrative. Suffering under ‘ma’s’ heavy weight, the poor slim fellow, who had a long white beard and wore a white robe, clawed the air with his hands and muttered: ‘Allah! Allah!’ Meanwhile, ‘dad’ was desperately trying to run back along the fast track to help ‘ma’, only to ‘butt’ right into a ‘big negro’ (like the ones Oaky had seen at the Dahomeyan village exhibit). Instead of chopping dad’s head off with a hatchet, the black man managed to ‘pick dad up in his arms and carry him off of the sidewalks and set him down’. ‘If there hadn’t been so many other people laughing’, Oaky thought, ‘I should “a” laughed myself, for it was one of the funniest sights I’d seen that day.’

The escapades of Oaky’s parents seem to indicate that the moving walkway was a site where the international aspect of the exposition came to the fore, when foreign visitors and foreign exhibits alike tried it out. This idea is not supported by existing photographic evidence, which rarely shows non-French and non-Western characters on the platforms. Of course, this may have been caused by the selections made either by the editors or the photographers themselves. As a marked contrast to them, a board game inspired by the Trottoir roulant included many foreign and exotic characters, but this may have depended on the nature of the product: its producer probably wanted to make the game board attractive and colorful (see Figure 11).³⁶ A British reporter, who seems to have stayed away from the moving walkway himself, nevertheless emphasized its cross-cultural appeal:

It has exercised a marvellous attraction over all classes and all nations, and a most interesting sight it has been to watch the crowds using this novel mode of locomotion. Rich and poor, young and old, Parisians and provincials, Americans and Orientals, Arabs and Esquimaux jostling, walking, falling, laughing, all in the best of humours, it has been a sight to refresh one indescribably after the serious business of sightseeing in the Exhibition. (Butler, 1901: 275)

Figure 11

‘Le Trottoir roulant. Jeu souvenir de l’Exposition Universelle de 1900.’ A board game inspired by the Trottoir roulant. Georges Dreyfus, Paris, 1900. Author’s collection.

Most commentators were amused rather than alarmed by the accidents. Where the introduction of the train more than half a century earlier had given rise to fears and neuroses, the accidents on the Trottoir roulant were worth laughing at rather than truly dreadful (Schivelbusch, 1986[1977]: chs 8, 9: 129–149). The fin-de-siècle culture knew many phobias, but the Trottoir roulant was not really a source for them. Perhaps this had to do with its nature as a technological extension of walking, a harmless activity. The users submitted part of the control of their bodies to a machine, but only a part. This differed from the relationships between workers and machines at mechanized factories and offices, where the surrender to technology was total and involuntary. The Trottoir roulant offered a wilful balancing act between self-control by the human and a motor-driven system; its machine-like elements had been carefully hidden. Much like a game, it was possible to master it, and to enjoy interacting with it. The thrill was not unlike the one offered by mechanical attractions at amusement parks, arcades, and Midways adjoining expositions.

The association of accidents and the Trottoir roulant brings to mind the ‘train effect’, or stories about panicky reactions to Lumière’s silent film L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat (1895). Stephen Bottomore (1999) claims that some spectators reacted viscerally to the train approaching on the screen, as if it could have protruded into the auditorium. He has also shown that a widespread discursive tradition grew around this motif. It included films that commented on reactions to the virtual train, such as Robert W. Paul’s The Countryman and the Cinematograph (1901) and Edison’s Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show (1902). Their protagonists are country ‘rubes’ who cannot tell the difference between reality and its representation. Similar figures had appeared much earlier, proving that ‘Uncle Josh’ was a topos, a stock element recycled within culture.³⁷ Its reappearance around 1900 helped to negotiate people’s relationship with film, a new medium. Uncle Josh embodied ridiculous ignorance, an unsophisticated Other. Oaky’s parents were a manifestation of this topos, country ‘folks’ visiting not just a city, but one that was in a foreign country and ultra-sophisticated in its manners.

There are differences, however: watching a silent film was risk free, whereas the possibility of injuring oneself on the Trottoir roulant was real. Circulating stories about accidents may have added thrill, attracting rather than repulsing the curious. Still, it was always possible that the person lying on the platform and being laughed at by strangers would end up being oneself. Any visitor could become an unwilling real-life Uncle Josh, a personified topos, an accidental clown with torn clothes, and one’s hat traveling on its own on the ‘walking road’. Did the prospect of a sudden collapse of one’s cool and calculated self-image affect the pretentious façade of the bourgeois society? Could the Trottoir roulant function as a kind of potential funhouse mirror, teaching lessons about contingency, vulnerability, and the relativity of values? This might be the hidden message behind the sensationalist photogravure in Le Panorama 1900 Exposition Universelle. Still, one suspects that for the French the ‘pile-ups’, whether real or imagined, were hardly a true challenge to existing social norms. The seaside resorts and amusement parks on the other side of the Atlantic were getting much further in democratizing the experiences they offered.

Coda: Moving Walkways and the Denial of Vision

Le Trottoir roulant was a well considered and realized mobility system. Recalling Hunt’s categories, it accommodated all kinds of users. A procession-like aspect was built into it. One just bought a ticket and submitted oneself to it. The moving walkway did the rest, carrying the pedestrian through the city along a predetermined route. It could also be used for a stroll to reach a destination fast and effectively. Rambling on it was possible as well, although its appeal was somewhat limited by the need to buy a ticket. Still, there must have been those who enjoyed loitering without a destination, just watching the scenery roll by and observing others; perhaps they secretly expected to see an accident, or to catch a glimpse of some forbidden scene in a neighboring window. Examples of all these cases can be found in the photographic documentation, although it is of course impossible to penetrate the minds and intentions of all those tiny black and white figures. Le Trottoir roulant functioned as a prosthesis that both provided new possibilities for mobile visualities and amplified existing ones.

Le Trottoir roulant remained in many ways unique. Many moving walkways have since been built, but normally for strictly ritual purposes: they transport people from one spot to another, and normally for a short distance. Although there are exceptions, such as the scenic underwater conveyors at Seaworld’s theme parks, most traverse bleak ‘non-places’ (Marc Augé), for example transit corridors at airports. In 1900, the elevated ‘walking road’ was envisioned as part of the urban infrastructure. It offered both practical services and visual–physical enjoyment. In subsequent plans, the role of vision was often suppressed. A moving walkway Max E Schmidt hoped to install at Manhattan a decade later ran in a tunnel and was just an auxiliary to the swelling underground railway network (Shanor, 1988: 102–103). The idea of traveling on benches was revived, indicating that the walkway would transport exhausted city people, who would probably have accepted the lack of visual stimuli without paying attention to the whole issue. Effectiveness was more important than the opportunity of observing the hustle and bustle of city life.

Even so, a competition for building a system of moving walkways under the streets of Paris was organized in the 1920s (Meyan, 1923). But traveling long distances on rolling belts had already become obsolete in the accelerating ‘dromological’ society (Paul Virilio). The role of walking was at stake. Already in 1892, Ambrose Bierce discussed the ‘decline and fall of the American foot’, concluding that ‘nothing is more certain than that the American variety of it is doomed to a fatal atrophy from disuse in walking’ (Bierce, 1911[1892]: 115). As evidence, Bierce listed the street-car, the moving sidewalk, the elevator, and the ‘traveling carpet, carrying chairs among the several rooms’. Two decades later, William Inglis (1913: 14) found that ‘the art of walking’ had indeed become a ‘lost art’, adding the subway, the escalator, and the automobile to the list. To what extent these apply to the Old Continent is open for debate, but the general trend was clear: the modern city was not built for the walker, who was tolerated at best. Le Trottoir roulant announced a future that arrived, but ended up being less glorious than expected. Moving sidewalks, travelators, escalators, and other related species became invisible as they became commonplace. Is there any reason to try to make them visible again?

Footnotes

Notes

Erkki Huhtamo is Professor of Media History and Theory at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Design | Media Arts. He holds a PhD in Cultural History, and has published extensively on media archaeology and media arts. Professor Huhtamo’s most recent books are a large monograph titled Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (The MIT Press, 2013), and Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications and Implications (edited with Jussi Parikka, University of California Press, 2011).

Address: University of California Los Angeles, Department of Design | Media Arts, Broad Art Center, Suite 2275, 240 Charles E Young Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1456, USA. [email: erhuhta@ucla.edu]

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