124 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fortunate few who Lave been able to 

 devote months to its examination as a 

 whole. And yet something will be lost 

 when the days of universal exhibiiions 

 are past. There is a cross-fertilization 

 of ingenuity illustrated only when dis- 

 plays of the utmost diversity are brought 

 together. In Machinery Hall is the fa- 

 miliar festoon of perforated cards guid- 

 ing the Jac(iuard loom ; in the Federal 

 Building is a new indexer for libraries 

 identical in principle; in the Transpor- 

 tation Building is an extensive array of 

 the maps whose marginal letters and 

 tigures indicate the particular square in 

 a chess-board where a sought town or 

 village may be found; in Machinery 

 Hall the compositor is superseded by a 

 machine which adopts the same prin- 

 ciple in casting type from a manuscript 

 reduced to perforated symbols. 



In so far as there may be a science 

 and an art in disposing a universal ex- 

 hibition the Fair at Chicago evinces a 

 distinct advance. Mr. G. Brown Goode, 

 of the National Museum at Washington, 

 defines an efficient educational museum 

 as a collection of instructive labels, each 

 illustrated by a well-selected specimen. 

 Add to this the intelligent custodian to 

 answer inquiry or to show a machine or 

 an apparatus at work, and from muse- 

 ums are born an exhibition interesting 

 and informing. Something else, how- 

 ever, is necessary an exhibition must 

 mainly, but should never wholly, de- 

 pend upon the good will, the enterprise, 

 or the generosity of individual exhibit- 

 ors. Wherever needful, it should be 

 made comprehensive by the board of 

 management buying or hiring what they 

 can not borrow. Because of the strike 

 at Homestead last year there is at Chi- 

 cago no adequate display of the iron and 

 steel industry wliich has in America 

 made so remarkable progress within re- 

 cent years. In the Electricity Building 

 there is no display of Edison's kineto- 

 graph, an instrument which nearly two 

 years ago had been brought to the point 

 of reproducing by instantaneous pho- 



tography with remarkable fidelity the 

 visual impressions of motion. 



With abundant means, with trained 

 skill and comprehensive purpose, much 

 the best group of exliibits at Chicago is 

 presented by the national departments, 

 in the Federal Building. Within its ap- 

 pointed limits the displays in the An- 

 thropological Building are as admirable 

 in arrangement as those of the Federal 

 Government; here the debt is mainly 

 due to the devoted labors of the officer 

 in charge, Prof. F. W. Putnam, of Har- 

 vard University. In the Agricultural 

 Building the State experiment stations, 

 which owe their origin to Prof. W. O. 

 Atwater, in their systematic array of 

 appliances and results show how much 

 the farmer is profited by his new part- 

 nership with the man of research. Agri- 

 culture, it would seem, in certainty of 

 results, is fast taking on the conditions 

 of manufacture. Many of the industrial 

 exhibits in excellence of arrangement 

 vie with those formally scientific ; as a 

 type of these displays that of the Stand- 

 ard Oil Company deserves particular 

 mention. In the same building, that of 

 mining industry, the western gallery 

 bears a small but capital exhibit of alu- 

 minium, from its ore, bauxite, through the 

 processes of the electrical furnace until 

 pure metal is derived : all the principal 

 uses of the metal are illustrated; these 

 are accompanied by specimens of its most 

 valuable alloys. This exhibit is in strik- 

 ing contrast to others within the same 

 walls displays some of them as ill as- 

 sorted as the contents of an auction room. 



In designing several of the State 

 buildings at the Fair they were con- 

 trived to pay a double debt : they illus- 

 trate noteworthy styles of architecture, 

 or reproduce famous structures, as well 

 as serve as show places and club houses. 

 In much the same way it would have 

 been easy for, let us say, the Shoe and 

 Leather Building to have exemplified 

 the slow-burning construction for fac- 

 tories which in the Eastern States has 

 so much reduced the fire tax. 



