Erkki Huhtamo - Accidents on the

Design Media Arts Lunchtime Faculty Lecture

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Speeding through LAX toward our departure gate, we routinely step on the moving walkway, paying hardly any attention to it. In 1900 things were different. Le trottoir roulant was the most sensational novelty of the Paris Universal Exposition. It circled the exposition grounds, challenging the visitors' ideas of mobility and vision, causing accidents, and invoking wild fantasies about future societies, where everything would be in motion. This lecture excavates the early history of the moving walkway, demonstrating how it became interwoven with ideas of modernity and the evolving urban space.