"If you don’t think on single, exemplary icons and pavilions, but try to realize the atmosphere and the flair, then complete other pictures will arise in your head. You are looking at a whole panorama of the visions of world; you are thinking on the opulent and wasteful, operatic and pompous, industrial and inventory, exotical and spectacular world of the 19th century."

Elke Krasny, "Zukunft ohne Ende – das Unternehmen Weltausstellung" in the book to the exposition "Wunschmaschine Welterfindung – Eine Geschichte der Technikvisionen seit dem 18. Jahrhundert", Springer-Verlag, Wien 1993

The photographic views, which where used on the following pages are mostly privat views, whose original vintages are in my posession.