Mobility on Display: Transport and Communication at the Exhibitions of the Second Industrial Revolution

di Andrea Giuntini
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 17 (2004), p. 19

The world of exhibitions, which had particularly lasting effects on Europe and Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century as well as during the so-called Belle Époque, presents one of the most suitable areas of research to analyse the evolution and the character of the first globalisation, as many scholars nowadays define this period. Means of transport and communication, whose most astonishing achievements – from the most powerful locomotives to the longest submarine cables – were displayed at all major exhibitions, aimed at accurately displaying the world’s enlargement a global perspective. Thus, this analysis of the technological goods exhibited all over the continent contributes to further refining the definition of the concept of mobility during the era of the Second Industrial Revolution.