The Chicago World's Fair And The Gilded Age

The World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was an event celebrating American invention and innovation on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. The fair was open for six months and was visited by an estimated 27.5 million people. The Fair was a major influence on the spirt invention associated with the Gilded Age, but it was also influenced by the spirit of the time.
The Chicago World’s Fair was at one of the most progressive time periods in American history. Free from the bonds of the Civil War, American inventors were able to invent for the sake of invention, women were once again able to fight for their rights as citizens, and African Americans were, for the first time ever, viewed as people

There were several inventions at the fair having to do with electricity, which had only recently been harnessed into controllable energy by people like Tesla and Edison. The World’s Fair gave the American public a way to become informed about electricity and its safety before bringing it into their homes. The World’s Fair also featured a building on the Fairground dedicated entirely to women. In this building many important suffragists gave talks. The presence of the Woman's Building at the Chicago World’s Fair is indicative of the growing women’s movement in Post-Civil War America. Women were not the only group attempting to cement their role in society and educate people on their causes, African Americans also did this on African American day. Which not only served as a education for the mostly white fair goers about traditional African American culture, but also helped Africans Americans cement their role in society. The African Americans involved in the fair wanted white people to see how well they were able to adapt to

At this time the United States was constructing massive amounts of railroad track that eventually grew to connect the entire country. The World’s Fair acted as a jumping off point for the creation of the railroad in some respects. For example, the powerful 999 steam train was presented at the World’s Fair. This train made fast train travel more accessible and ushered in the age of the locomotive. The quadricycle was another important invention that was present at the fair. The quadricycle was an extremely early iteration of an automobile. The quadricycle itself was not necessarily a huge step in history, but it was seen by the man who would go on to create the greatest advancement in automobile technology 20 years after the fair, Henry Ford. Henry Ford, of Ford Automobile fame, was inspired to create his revolutionary automobile design by the quadricycle. The quadricycle gave Ford an idea that changed the world, without the quadricycle Ford may not have gone into the auto industry and produced the first widely used automobiles. The quadricycle is indirectly responsible for one of the single most important inventions ever, the world would have been very different had the quadricycle not existed. The World’s Fair acted as a breeding ground for new ideas and inventions that went