The Paris Exhibition of 1867 was upon a far larger scale than that of 1855. It was held, like those that preceded and succeeded it, at the Champ de Mars, and covered 41 acres. The building resembled an exaggerated gasometer. The external ring was devoted to machinery, the internal to the gradual development of civilization, commencing with the stone age and continuing to the present era. A great feature of the exhibition was the park, which was studded with specimens of every style of modern architecture--Turkish mosques, Swedish cottages, English lighthouses, Egyptian palaces and Swiss châlets. The number of attendances was 6,805,969. The exhibitors numbered 43,217, and the total amount received for entrances, concessions, &c., was £420,735. This was the first exhibition at which there were international restaurants. The cost of the exhibition was defrayed partly by the state and partly by private subscriptions.
Small exhibitions were held in various parts of Europe between 1867 and 1870, and in the latter year a series of international exhibitions, confined to one or two special descriptions of produce or manufactures, was inaugurated in London at South Kensington. These continued till 1874, but they failed to attract any very large attendance of the public and were abandoned. A medal was given to each exhibitor, and reports on the various exhibits were published, but there was no examination of the exhibits by jurors. In 1873 there was an International Exhibition at Vienna. The main building, a rotunda, was erected in the beautiful park of the Austrian capital. There were halls for machinery and agricultural products, and hundreds of buildings, erected by different nations, were scattered amongst the woodlands of the Prater. Unfortunately, an outbreak of cholera diminished the attendance of visitors, and the receipts were only £206,477, although the visitors were said to have reached 6,740,500, and the number of exhibitors was 25,760.
None of the International Exhibitions held between 1857 and 1873 had attracted as many as 7,000,000 visitors, but the gradual extension of education amongst the masses, and the greater facilities for locomotion, brought about by the growth of the railway system in all portions of the civilized world, largely increased the attendances at subsequent World's Fairs. The Centennial Exhibition of 1876, to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of American Independence, was held at Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. The funds were raised partly by private subscriptions, and partly by donations from the city of Philadelphia, from Pennsylvania and some of the neighbouring states. The central government at Washington made a large loan, which was subsequently repaid. The principal buildings, five in number, occupied an area of 48½ acres, and there were several smaller structures, which in the aggregate must have filled half as much space more, the largest being that devoted to the exhibits of the various departments of the United States government, which covered 7 acres. Several novelties in exhibition management were introduced at Philadelphia. Instead of gold, silver and bronze medals, only one description, bronze, was issued, the difference between the merits of the different exhibits being shown by the reports. Season tickets were not issued, and the price of admission, the same on all occasions, was half a dollar, or about 2s. 1d. The exhibition was not open at night or on Sundays, thus following the British, and not the continental, precedent. The number of visitors was 9,892,625, of whom 8,004,214 paid for admission, the balance being exhibitors, officials and attendants. The total receipts amounted to £763,899. Upon one occasion, the Pennsylvania day, 274,919 persons--the largest number that had visited any exhibition up to that date--passed through the turnstiles. The display of machinery was the finest ever made, that of the United States occupying 480,000 sq. ft. The motive-power was obtained from a Corliss engine of 1600 horse-power. At this exhibition the United Kingdom and the British Colonies of Canada, Victoria, New South Wales, New Zealand, Cape Colony and Tasmania made a very fine display, which was only excelled by that of the United States.
