World's Fair: Columbian Exposition

In 1893 the rivalry of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison still burned. One of their biggest disagreements was about the best form of electrical power; Edison promoted direct current and Tesla favored alternating current. Tesla coils like these amplify alternating current to make it stronger and more useful. Today, most Tesla coils are used for entertainment and science education - they can shoot bits of lightning into the air, which looks amazing - but back then they used them to power radios or sell quack medicine.

When the Exposition came to town, someone had to design enough buildings to house it. That someone was architect Daniel Hudson Burnham. Burnham moved to Chicago early in his career and founded Burnham and Root, a famous architecture firm that designed prominent buildings across the United States. He was put in charge of planning the exhibition, and when it opened (in spite of time constraints and a nation-wide financial panic) its Classical Revival buildings awed visitors. They nicknamed Chicago "the White City" on seeing them.

While it's common at fairs and amusement parks now, the Ferris Wheel didn't exist before the Columbian Exposition. At the time it was considered an engineering triumph; never before had anyone attempted to build a structure that big capable of moving parts of itself. Towering over the fair at over 250 feet tall, the Ferris Wheel was supposed to be World's Fair's chief landmark and centerpiece, like the Eiffel Tower was in Paris when it went up before another World's Fair four years earlier. Unlike the Eiffel Tower, the Ferris Wheel was disassembled when the Fair ended. Various organizations shipped it to other parts of Chicago and later to St. Louis, where, after running at the 1904 World's Fair, its owners disposed of it by blowing it up with dynamite. However, there's only one Eiffel Tower. The Ferris wheel lives on almost everywhere.

Today, the Field Museum of Natural History is a Chicago landmark, one of the country's most prestigious museums and biggest tourist attractions. In 1983 it was one building of many. Paid for by Marshall Field (the guy who founded the department store), the "Columbian Museum of Chicago" housed artifacts and exhibits from contributors all over the world. Many of the World's Fair's buildings were torn down shortly after it ended; most weren't intended to last beyond the exposition. But this museum stayed. In 1905 it was renamed the Field Museum of Natural History, to honor its benefactor and mission, and it stands on the lakefront where it was built over a century ago. The Field Museum is the last standing example of the Classical Revival architecture that characterized the Exposition, and in its pillars and marble you can see why they called Chicago "the White City".

While the Columbian Exposition's most famous achievements are those in architecture and science, it left its legacy in other areas too - like food. Brownies are now a standby desert across the United States, but they first debuted at the Palmer House hotel during the World's Fair, where visitors from across the country and the world discovered them on the dessert menu. This is the recipe they used over a century ago, and the average brownie looks a little different today; most lack the apricot glaze, for instance. But you can find its descendants across the United States, a bit of the Columbian Exposition's legacy still sitting on counters and in stomachs.