by Dawn Raffel

In 1898, a mysterious European named Dr. Martin Couney introduced Americans to a new machine at the Omaha World’s Fair. This life-saving invention was the infant incubator. Visitors to the midway could pay to see it in use—with live babies inside it! The story of the proprietor was so bizarre that I spent four years researching him for my new nonfiction book, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney.

By 1903, Martin Couney had set up shop on the Coney Island and Atlantic City boardwalks for a 40-year run, showcasing preemies in incubators next to the sword swallowers and strippers. Shockingly, and despite the secrets he hid up his elegant sleeve, Dr. Couney was way ahead of the medical establishment. Hospitals sent tiny newborns to his sideshow because they had no other means to save them. Martin Couney brought his show to the midway of four more world’s fairs (Buffalo, 1901; San Francisco, 1915; Chicago, 1933-44; New York, 1939-40) and saved the lives of some 7,000 children over the course of his bizarre career. He is the unlikely but rightful father of American neonatology.

Long before the internet shrank our planet, world’s fairs were one of the main ways the public learned about new inventions. Here are six more innovations—from the silly to the profound—that were introduced at these grand expositions.

The Hootchy Kootchy (The Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893)

Known as “the White City,” Chicago’s first world’s fair was famous for its iconic Ferris Wheel, which its creator, George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., claimed was the first of its kind. Some people begged to differ, as smaller versions had appeared in Atlantic City, Asbury Park, and Coney Island the summer before; Ferris was sued but prevailed. What’s undeniable is that Chicago’s White City introduced Americans to grand-scale midway entertainment. At the Persian Palace of Eros, a dancer named Little Egypt performed the “danse du ventre”—otherwise known as the hootchy-kootchy. The midway’s wild success would lead to copycat White City theme parks all over the country.

The Escalator (The Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900)

Paris held several world’s fairs, or Expositions Universelle. At the 1878 exposition, Parisians could view the head of the Statue of Liberty, before she sailed away to meet her body. The Eiffel Tower, created for the 1889 fair, forever changed the skyline in the City of Light. At the 1900 fair, the newfangled escalator was a hit. Unfortunately, almost all the concessionaires’ finances were going in only one direction: down. After that financial disaster, there were no more Parisian world’s fairs until the final one, in 1937.

The X-Ray (The Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, NY, 1901)

During his visit to the Buffalo world’s fair, President William McKinley gave a speech, stating, “Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world’s advancement.” The following day, McKinley was shot twice in the gut by an anarchist. Ironically, one of the great “advancements” on display was the X-ray machine, which thousands of visitors had already viewed. But no one felt capable of using the machine on the President. Unable to locate the second bullet, a surgeon sewed up the wound. Eight days later, the President died of gangrene.

The Ice Cream Cone (The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, MO, 1904)

John Phillip Sousa’s marching band set the peppy, on-your-feet pace of this fair. Throughout the summer, the public delighted in the ice cream cone, a portable sphere of pleasure that was easy to eat on the go. In all fairness, the first to invent the cone was an immigrant named Italo Marchiony, a New Yorker who quietly patented it in 1903. But it was a Syrian concessionaire in St. Louis who, independent of that unenforceable patent (and probably unaware of it), made the treat a hit. Legend has it that Ernest A. Hamwi was selling crisp waffle-type pastries at the fair when the ice cream vendor next door ran out of cups–and Hamwi devised a brilliant solution. In a minute, the other concessionaires were copying the wildly popular cone. To add to the sugar high, visitors could wash it down with a fizzy new drink called Dr. Pepper.

The Transcontinental Telephone Call (The Panama Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915)

On January 25, 1915, Alexander Graham Bell placed a call from New York to his assistant, Dr. Thomas Watson, in San Francisco, while awed crowds at the world’s fair listened in. Although the first cross-country call had been successfully tested the summer before, this very public event announced that the world had now been made much smaller.

The Boob Tube (The World of Tomorrow, New York, NY 1939-40)

As the Depression hung on and the U.S. teetered on the brink of war, millions of visitors flocked to New York’s futuristic fair. Albert Einstein addressed the crowd on opening day. At General Motors’ Futurama, visitors waited on line for hours to ride in gliding chairs, from which they could view a sparkling tomorrow, with skyscrapers and 14-lane highways. Borden debuted a new milking machine. But that bovine bit of technology was nowhere near a match for the distraction for the ages: the television.

Dawn Raffel is the author of five books, the most recent of which is The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, which will be published by Blue Rider Press on July 31, 2018.

Visit her at Dawnraffel.com and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.