An age of curiosity
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48˚ 51’ 32” N | 2˚ 17’ 40” E
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Paris is a city of writers—Victor Hugo, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Voltaire. And writers who visit can’t help but make the city a backdrop for their own work—Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. More than inspiring, her streets are pages of a story waiting to be picked up, bound, and kept close on your nightstand. © Vast Compass, 2025.
Dickens and the first weather forecast
Charles Dickens died in 1870, the same year that saw the end of French domination in Europe and the rise of the German Empire. Modernity, long waiting in the wings, was about to take center stage.
A Christmas Carol
In these books and others Dickens unflinchingly captures humankind’s capacity for cruelty, as well as the inequality between the world’s have’s and have-not’s. Aristocratic decadence is made especially vivid in the chapters of A Tale of Two Cities describing the French court in its fatal lead-up to bloody Revolution. Dickens’ worldview and his writings were anchored firmly in abstract notions of the Enlightenment like individual agency, property rights, and the division of labor, as well as their real-world application, or absence. And while some of his main characters come to ruinous ends or find release from their pain only through death, many others find happiness and redemption against the odds.
A Tale of Two Cities
As the author’s enduring historical novel A Tale of Cities captures, there is a timeless push and a pull between prosperity and despair in every era—“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Sadly, poverty and subjugation of the less fortunate are likely with us for all time. While few artists have been as effective as Charles Dickens in shining a literary light on the downtrodden, with the young boys in Oliver Twist and Great Expectations being just two examples, he also created one of the most potent transformations of the human spirit in A Christmas Carol, with Mr. Scrooge’s overnight journey from, “Bah! Humbug!” to, “A Merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world.”
Living at warp speed
Power shifts across Europe unfolded even as the world writ large was being remade in the image of the Industrial Revolution, with mechanical inventions and new technologies altering lives at warp speed. At the same time the Scientific Revolution was upending millennia of dogma with a new found embrace of empirical evidence and quantitative reasoning. While Charles Dickens never met Charles Darwin, the writer lived long enough to learn of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and natural selection. Novels like David Copperfield make clear Dickens’ understanding that the ‘survival of the fittest’ is a powerful reality.
Dickens’ writings also show that he had a keen interest in natural phenomena like changes in the weather and shifting patterns on the waves caused by low pressure systems from above—his novels are chock-a-block with accurate references to these and other presentations of nature. Beyond rain and sea spray, it’s also obvious the writer had both a studied appreciation and scientific understanding of the conditions that create fog and the behaviors of smoke and soot which feature in so many of his tales. He certainly would have paid heed to the first ‘weather forecast’ which was made in England in 1861.
The Industrial Revolution
In the final years of Charles Dickens life, Industrial Revolution-era inventions like the elevator, bicycle, padlock, machine gun, plastic, dynamite, typewriter, air brakes, and traffic lights were re-shaping everyday life. The process for refining ore into steel was patented in 1856. Photo credit: ivan-96, iStock.
Much to discuss
The year that Charles Dickens died, nine years after the world’s first weather forecast, Thomas Alva Edison opened his first major workshop, the Newark Telegraph Works, and within six years the former telegraph operator would also found Menlo Park, the world’s first industrial research center. Meanwhile, inventions poured out of his enterprises, including the phonograph, electric vote recorder, and seminal advancements in motion picture technology.
With a deluge of innovation the order of the day, it’s only natural that Thomas Edison and Gustave Eiffel would admire one another’s achievements in advancing human progress. Eiffel had built his Tower out of new-fangled wrought iron, and Edison had dabbled in iron ore production. Inspired by the Statue of Liberty’s torch Eiffel had envisioned light atop his Tower from the beginning, and Edison had perfected the electric incandescent light bulb. The two men of industry had much to discuss.
Lunch with a side of opera
Edison visited Paris during an itinerary spanning August and September while the world’s fair of 1889 was at its peak. On August 27 he attended a luncheon at one of the Eiffel Tower’s restaurants, Le Brébant. Serenaded by opera singers at the height of 377 feet, Edison recorded their arias on a phonograph and finished his visit by playing back the songs they sang.
Opera composer Charles Gounod, a former critic of the Tower (and signatory to the artistic protest published in Le Temps several years earlier), happened to be dining at Le Brébant that same day. The composer gladly joined in the festivities, even playing the piano for delighted guests and staff. Edison gifted Eiffel with the phonograph that played a starring role that afternoon. A plaque was later added to the phonograph commemorating the day. And so it went.
Attendees listened to Edison’s phonograph play the American and French national anthems in the Exposition Universelle of 1889’s Galeries des Machines. Another exhibit demonstrated the recording of a telephone message onto a wax disc—it was the world’s first voicemail. Image credit: Paul Uestel.
The prolific inventor (the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’) exhibited no fewer than 493 innovations at the Exposition Universelle from May to October 1889. Shown above, Edison’s exhibit in the Telephone and Phonograph Department which showcased ways in which electric communications would transform the world.
CDGE10040*—Léon Foucault is one among 72 French scientists, engineers, and mathematicians whose names are inscribed beneath the Eiffel Tower’s first balcony. Astronomer, physicist, and inventor of the gyroscope, Foucault’s 1851 experiment proving the rotation of the Earth caused a sensation. Edison saw Foucault’s Pendulum at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. A replica of the experiment, shown above, is once more installed beneath the dome of the Pantheon.
CDGE13343*—Several typewriters were exhibited at the 1889 world’s fair, including one in Thomas Edison’s display of improvements to existing technologies. Note the AZERTY key layout specifically designed for the French language with accented characters and other special marks used in French. A portable model from Erika, above, was wildly popular when it was introduced in the late 1930s. This photo was taken at Paris’ storied Marché aux puces (literally, ‘flea market’, and the eponym for which all others that came after are named).
The glory of Eiffel
is in the magnitude of the conception
and the nerve in the execution.
—Thomas Alva Edison, September 10, 1889
The Exposition Universelle of 1889
The 1889 Exposition Universelle grounds and Eiffel Tower gateway, photographed from a hot air balloon by Alphonse Liébert. The aerie is cropped, just out of sight at the top. Photo credit: U.S. Library of Congress.
The brave builder
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Thomas Edison signed a guestbook in Gustave Eiffel’s private office in the Tower’s aerie, writing, “To M Eiffel the Engineer the brave builder of so gigantic and original specimen of modern Engineering from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu, Thomas Edison.’”
Boys will be boys
Despite Edison’s admiration for Gustave Eiffel and his Tower, boys will be boys. Which is why the American inventor boasted in Paris that he’d build his own tower for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (the Chicago World’s Fair). Proclaiming his would be twice the height of Eiffel’s, Edison’s vision of a 2,000-foot iron colossus never came to pass.
Instead, in 1893 a different attraction in steel and cast iron was all the rage—the Ferris Wheel.
And while the Chicago fair was the first to be illuminated, its 160,000 light bulbs were provisioned and powered by a fierce competitor of Edison’s—George Westinghouse. The ‘War of the Currents’, as they say, is a story for another day.
Recommended
Iron isn’t the only material that inspires innovators and makers. Paper engineers bring magical worlds to life by combining their artistic vision with complex technical skill in paper mechanics. Among our collection of more than 100 pop-up books are several featuring the Eiffel Tower. Here are two that are currently available online.
The spread featuring the Eiffel Tower in Parisrama from our library (in French). Below is the English version.
Paper artist Dominique Ehrhard also makes London and New York City Popups.
Paris, a pop-up stroll through the city of light: Parisrama, English Version
From Amazon
“An extraordinary book celebrating the most beautiful city in the world in 3D! With its four richly illustrated dioramas and its map, this is a book whose aesthetics and quality animations will appeal to both bibliophiles and pop-up fans, from the youngest to the oldest! This spectacular pop-up contains a wealth of information, translated into English, about Paris and its most beautiful neighborhoods.”
Paris Pop-Up
From Amazon
“A celebration of the monuments, landmarks and other sites that make Paris unmistakable from any other world city in a fun, interactive pop-up book format.”