CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION 



1252 



CENTIPEDE 



ASTRONOMY, for explanation). It must be re- 

 membered, however, that light travels a dis- 

 tance of 186,330 miles a second; the distance 

 of 4.4 light years is therefore too great to be 

 expressed in figures that would convey any 

 meaning. Centaurus is represented in mythol- 

 ogy as half man, half horse, chief of the cen- 

 taurs, a teacher of all the manly and noble arts 

 who was accidentally killed by Hercules and 

 placed among the stars by Jupiter. See CEN- 

 TAUR. 



CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION, senten'nial 

 ex po zish ' un, a world's fair, the first interna- 

 tional exhibition of arts, manufactures and 

 products of the earth held in America. This 

 exposition was planned to commemorate the 

 hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of 

 Independence, and was held in the summer 

 of 1876, in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, the 

 city in which the Declaration was written. Its 

 site covered 236 acres, within which about 

 200 buildings were erected. The main building 

 was nearly 2,000 feet long and 464 feet wide. 

 Other important buildings were Machinery 

 Hall, Agricultural Hall, Horticultural Hall and 

 Memorial Hall. The last-named, used as an 

 art gallery, was constructed in permanent form 

 of granite, glass and iron, and is now the 

 Pennsylvania Museum of Art. Nearly fifty 

 foreign governments were represented in the 

 exhibits. Prizes were awarded contributors, 

 and the judges were some of the most famous 

 men of science and in the professions. Nearly 

 10,000,000 people paid admission to the 

 grounds. 



The exhibition was important because it 

 showed Americans the superiority of some 

 European products, and thus stimulated in- 

 creased effort for improvement in American 

 goods. It also opened the eyes of Europeans 

 to the fact that a manufacturing and com- 

 mercial nation was developing in America 

 which threatened European supremacy in those 

 fields. At this exhibition the Bell telephone 

 was first exhibited, and there the grace and 

 beauty of articles of Japanese manufacture 

 became apparent to the people of the United 

 States for the first time. 



Since the Centennial, other international 

 exhibitions have been held in the United 

 States, each contributing a permanent building 

 to the city in which it was held. See WORLD'S 

 COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION; PANAMA-PACIFIC EX- 

 POSITION; ALASKA- YUKON-PACIFIC EXPOSITION. 



CENTIGRADE, sen' ti gray d, a type of ther- 

 mometer which is graduated on the scale of 



one hundred. In the Fahrenheit thermometer, 

 the freezing point is 32 above zero and the 

 boiling point 212 ; in the Centigrade the freez- 

 ing point is zero and the boiling point 100. 

 The two are made precisely alike, and the 

 length of tube between freezing point and boil- 

 ing point does not differ ; but on the Fahrenheit 

 that length of tube is divided into 180 degrees 

 and on the Centigrade into 100 degrees. If, 

 therefore, it is desired to translate Centigrade 

 readings into Fahrenheit, the number of degrees 

 Centigrade must be multiplied by 18 %oo, or %, 

 and the product increased by 32. To change 

 Fahrenheit to Centigrade, on the other hand, 

 multiply the Fahrenheit reading by % and 

 subtract 32. See THERMOMETER. 



CEN'TIMETER, a measure of distance 

 equivalent to 0.3937 of an inch. It is the 

 hundredth part of a meter, from which the 

 metric system derives its name. The term 

 centimeter is usually expressed by the letters 

 cm. See METRIC SYSTEM; METER. 



CENTIPEDE, sen' ti peed, a wormlike crea- 

 ture, with a body consisting of numerous 

 rings or segments, each of which bears a small 

 pair of legs. There are so many legs it was 

 once popularly believed there were a hundred, 



A CENTIPEDE 



and so it got its name. But really no centi- 

 pede has yet been found to possess more 

 than thirty-one pairs of legs. Its body is flat- 

 tened, with feelers usually long and many- 

 jointed. Commonly found under stones and 

 dead wood, it is a creepy, crawling thing much 

 despised and generally considered poisonous. 

 However, the common centipede is quite harm- 

 less; as a matter of fact, it eats earthworms 

 and insects which would be harmful to vege- 

 tation. Though some species of tropical coun- 

 tries inflict severe and often dangerous bites, 

 they, too, eat destructive insects such as cock- 

 roaches and beetles. Some of these tropical 

 species grow to a length of eighteen inches. 



