A quote from Out Of A Fair, A City by Ada Louise Huxtable:

“It is a formidable tradition, for the achievements of the nineteenth-century International Expositions were unique. In art, architecture, industry, and culture, they were the common exchange around of all that was interesting and new. Intensely competitive, each successive exhibition attempted to cap its predecessors in the daring of its progressive constructions and the magnificence of its artistic displays. As industry leaped forward, its advances were proudly advertised, and the world came to see and learn. If industry frequently outran art, the Fairs still were the showcase of all the important technical and aesthetic experiments of the age. Today, the mementos of their prestige are collectors’ curios, but the most important souvenir of the World’s Fair was ideas.”