World's fair

World's fair, international exposition of science and technology, entertainment, and culture. The first such fair was the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. World's fairs have frequently displayed new inventions and feats of engineering, such as the telephone (Philadelphia, 1876), the Eiffel Tower (Paris, 1889), the automobile (St. Louis, 1904), and television (New York, 1939). More recently, fairs have had central themes such as outer space or the oceans. World's fairs have been held all over the world.