People looking at fireworks Vintage

People looking at fireworks Vintage, The day the Exposition opened it was discovered that foot-bridges would play an important role and that one could not see the different parts of the show without much climbing up and down. One may enter the Exposition from any side without taking a train or an omnibus; but as it spreads over several quarters of Paris, it has been necessary to leave free the streets and avenues through which it cuts, lest the circulation of the city should be interrupted. For this reason characteristic foot-bridges (jmsereUes) have been built, which rise eighteen feet above the avenues. The crowd grumbles at this additional fatigue; but the stream of humanity flows unceasingly from morning until far into the night, and on Sundays a police service is necessary to regulate this sort of travel.

Street-lamps shed about them a uniform luster, crude and white; the lines of the Tour Eiffel are traced by means of steady-burning electric lights, and on the cornices of the buildings sparkle rows of gas-jets, trembling in the breeze as though alive; at the end of the Champ de Mars the Palace of Electricity is resplendent in jewels of color; and from the Chateau d'Eau, a hundred feet high, luminous fountains fall in dazzling cascades. From the top of the Tour Eiffel, from the summit of the German lighthouse, immense rays of electric light search the horizon and touch the far-off buildings of sleeping Paris with the glow of fire, or suddenly stream down upon the crowds massed in the gardens. Here, as in a flash of lightning, one sees thousands of white faces, compact and swaying.

Title: The Century, Volume 61. Image by: Félix Edouard Vallotton (December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925) Publisher: The Century Co., 1901. Original from: Harvard University. Digitized: Mar 16, 2007. Subjects: Fiction › Science Fiction › General. This IMAGE (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" PDF from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published before 1923 (in this case 1901) are now in the public domain. This file is also in the public domain in countries that figure copyright from the date of death of the artist (post mortem auctoris) in this case Félix Edouard Vallotton (December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925), and that most commonly runs for a period of 50 to 70 years from December 31st of that year.

From the height of the Palais d'Optique a revolving light turns slowly, passing under its placid and monotonous examination the same walls and the same shady corners. Lanterns hung by thousands in the tree branches seem like enormous blood oranges in a new garden of the Hesperides. The crowds wait patiently for the fireworks, which make a splendid finish to the day's festivity. Close by one can see the outlines of the dense mass of spectators, fading away into obscurity. A report resounds, all the faces are uplifted eyes pierce the gloom and suddenly in the sky which seems blacker by comparison with so much brilliancy centered on the earth, a marvelous flower of light unfolds. Finally a drum sounds the retreat and the happy crowds disperse.

TEXT CREDIT: The Century, Volume 61