Many technological innovations were displayed at the Fair, including the Grande Roue de Paris ferris wheel, the Rue de l'Avenir moving sidewalk, the first ever regular passenger trolleybus line, escalators, diesel engines, electric cars, dry cell batteries, electric fire engines, talking films, the telegraphone (the first magnetic audio recorder), the galalith and the matryoshka dolls.

Of the fifty-six countries invited to participate with official representation, forty accepted, plus an additional number of colonies and protectorates of France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Portugal.

[5] Among the colonies and protectorates present in the Fair were French Algeria, Cambodia, Congo, Dahomey, Guadeloupe, Guiana, Guinea, India, Indochina, Ivory Coast, Laos, Madagascar, Martinique, Mayotte, New Caledonia, Oceania, Réunion, Senegal, Somaliland, Sudan, Tonkin, Tunisia, West Africa, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the Dutch East Indies, British Canada, Ceylon, India and Western Australia and the Portuguese colonies.

La Parisienne was executed by sculptor Paul Moreau-Vauthier who collaborated with Paris' pre-eminiment haute couturier of the day, Jeanne Paquin, who designed the figure's fashionable attire.

[9] Binet sought inspiration from science, tucking the vertebrae of a dinosaur, the cells of a beehive, rams, peacocks, and poppies into the design alongside other animalistic stimuli.

To house the industrial, commercial, scientific, technological and cultural exhibitions, the French organization built huge thematic pavilions on the esplanade of Les Invalides and the Champ de Mars and reused the Galerie des machines from the 1889 Exposition.

Among the most popular was the Palace of Optics, whose main attractions included the Great Paris Exposition Telescope, which enlarged the image of the moon ten thousand times.

The Palace of Electricity and the adjoining Water Castle (Chateau d'Eau), designed by architects Eugène Hénard and Edmond Paulin,[9] were among the most popular sights.

The more modern interior iron framework, huge skylights and stairways offered decorative elements in the new Art Nouveau style,[9] particularly in the railings of the staircase, which were intricately woven in fluid, organic forms.

[9] The interior offers examples of Art Nouveau, particularly in the railings of the curving stairways, the tiles of the floors, the stained glass, and the murals on the ceiling of the arcade around the garden.

One of the largest and most ornate was the Palais des Manufactures Nationale, whose facade included a colorful ceramic gateway, designed by sculptor Jules Coutan and architect Charles Risler and made by the Sèvres Porcelain manufactory.

The pavilions were all temporary, made of plaster and staff on a metal frame and were designed in an architectural style that represented a period in the country's history, often imitating famous national monuments.

[2] At the Rue des Nations, on the left bank of the Seine, on the Quai d'Orsay, overlooking the river, from the Pont des Invalides towards the Pont de l'Alma, were located the national pavilions of Italy, Turkey, the United States, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Great Britain, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Spain, Monaco, Sweden, Greece, Serbia and Mexico.

[23] The pavilions of the Austro-Hungarian domains in the Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina, offered displays on their lifestyles, consisting of folklore traditions, highlighting peasanthood and the embroidery goods produced in the country.

Serbia presented numerous products at the exposition, such as wine, food, fabrics, minerals and won a total of 19 gold, 69 silver and 98 bronze medals.

This pavilion suffered some disruption in August 1900, when anti-Western rebels seized the International delegations in Beijing in the Boxer Rebellion and held them for several weeks until an expeditionary force from the Eight-Nation Alliance arrived and recaptured the city.

[28] An area of several dozen hectares on the hill of the Trocadéro Palace was set aside for the pavilions of the colonies and protectorates of France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Portugal.

Algeria, Sudan, Dahomey, Guinea and the other French African colonies presented pavilions based on their traditional religious architecture and marketplaces, with guides in costume.

It was a 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) long circular route connecting the recently opened Porte de Vincennes metro station with Lac Daumesnil.

The sphere was the scene of a fatal accident on 29 April 1900 when one of access ramps, hastily made of a newly introduced material, reinforced concrete, collapsed onto the street below, killing nine people.

[40] There were also several recreations depicting picturesque or touristic regions of France, including exhibitions from Provence, Bretagne, Poitou, Berry and Auvergne, using their pre-revolutionary provincial names rather than their departments.

It consisted in panoramic paintings by Louis Dumoulin in front of which groups of native people, dressed accordingly, move, play, dance, stroll or work.

The visitor traveled through representations of Fuenterrabía (Spain), the Pnyx hill in Athens (Greece), the cemetery of Stamboul and the Golden Horn of Constantinople (Turkey), Syria, the Suez Canal (Egypt), Ceylon, the Angkor Wat temple (Cambodia), Shanghai (China) and Nikkō (Japan).

The visit continued by showing dioramas of Rome, Moscow, New York and Amsterdam and ended with a mobile panorama of a boat trip along the coast of Provence, from Marseille to La Ciotat.

[45] Another popular diversion during the exposition was the theater of the American dancer, Loie Fuller, who performed a famous Serpentine dance in which she waved large silk scarves which seemed to envelop her into a cloud.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had no real control over the organization, no official interpretation has ever been made and various sources list differing events, further adding to the confusion that was Paris 1900.

He produced displays for the jeweler Georges Fouquet and the perfume maker Houbigant, with statuettes and panels of women depicting the scents of rose, orange blossom, violet and buttercup.

A 2.87 metres (9 ft 5 in) copy of the Statue of Liberty by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi exhibited at the Fair, was placed in the Luxembourg Gardens in 1905 at the request of his widow.

In the years after the exposition, La Ruche served as the temporary studio and home of dozens of young artists and writers including Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire.

[64] Short silent actuality films documenting the exposition by French director Georges Méliès and by Edison Manufacturing Company producer James H. White, have survived.