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Chicago World's Fair

1893 - The four hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World was celebrated in Chicago with an enormous fair. Known as the Chicago World’s Fair, or the World Columbian Exhibition, this gigantic gathering of displays and events was intended to showcase the great future being provided by technology and science, especially the new science of statistics.

Measurement was all the rage at the Fair. For example, statues of the ideal man and ideal woman had been carved to match the average measurements taken from thousands of actual college students.

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Program Segment 1

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