18761776 Club
Grant and Pedro II throw the switch; a 650-ton steam engine roars to life in Philadelphia
The Centennial Exposition opens in Fairmount Park with Bell's telephone, a torch-bearing arm of an unfinished Statue of Liberty, and a 57-ton Krupp cannon on the grounds.
On May 10, 1876, bells rang across Philadelphia as President Ulysses Grant and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil walked into Machinery Hall and together switched on the Corliss Steam Engine — 45 feet tall, 650 tons, powering the entire fairground. Nearly 10 million people would pass through Fairmount Park before closing day on November 10, encountering Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, the right arm and torch of an unfinished Statue of Liberty, and a 57-ton Krupp cannon — the full spectrum of a nation a hundred years old and remaking itself in iron and wire…
