Carnival, fair and amusement park history
Three shelves: the travelling carnival and its midway, the fairs and exhibitions that hosted it, and the amusement parks that kept the rides running year after year.
About this shelf
The Midway Machine is named for the strip of rides, games and booths at a fair, and this shelf is its family history: the travelling carnival, the fairs and exhibitions that hosted it, and the amusement parks that kept the rides turning all summer.
It starts with the word itself, borrowed from a Chicago park in 1893, and works outward to the penny arcades where coin-op fortune machines first stood, and to the fairs you can still visit through the Midway Directory.
What you will find here
- Why the strip is called a midway
- Travelling carnivals, sideshows and penny arcades
- Agricultural fairs and world’s fairs
- Trolley parks, Coney Island and the old carousels
Carnival and midway history
Travelling carnivals, sideshows, penny arcades, coin-op fortune machines and automata, and the lingo of the lot.
Carnival and midway history runs from the 1893 Chicago Midway to turn-of-the-century penny arcades, which offered coin-operated phonographs, picture viewers, strength testers and fortune-telling machines.12
On this shelf
Coming to this shelf
- Who invented the fortune-telling machine?
- What was a penny arcade?
- What is carny talk, and where did it come from?
- What was a sideshow, and why did it fade?
In the Midway Directory
Fair and exhibition history
Agricultural fairs, world’s fairs and expositions, and the big Canadian exhibitions such as the PNE and K-Days.
Fair history includes the agricultural exhibition, which in North America dates back to Nova Scotia in 1765, and great world's fairs such as Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.34
Coming to this shelf
- Why do fairs have prize vegetables and livestock shows?
- What was the first world’s fair?
- Why did Edmonton’s fair become Klondike Days?
- When did the PNE start?
In the Midway Directory
Amusement park history
Trolley parks, Coney Island, Playland-type parks, carousels and roller coasters.
Amusement park history includes trolley parks, built by streetcar companies to fill cars on weekends and later adding carousels and roller coasters, and Coney Island's Luna Park (1903 to 1944) and Dreamland (1904 to 1911).56
Coming to this shelf
- What was a trolley park?
- Why is Coney Island famous?
- Who carved the old carousel horses?
- What was the first roller coaster?
In the Midway Directory
Down the midway
Sources for this page
- Smarthistory via LibreTexts (Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott): The Midway. Read on · Reference
- SFO Museum: The Automatic Age: Coin-Operated Machines. Read on · Museum
- The Canadian Encyclopedia: Agricultural Exhibitions. Read on · Encyclopedia
- Internet Archive (Library of Congress copy): The official directory of the World's Columbian exposition, May 1st to October 30th, 1893. Read on · Archive
- Pennsylvania Trolley Museum: From Picnic Groves To Amusement Parks: The History of Trolley Parks. Read on · Museum
- Coney Island History Project: Collection - amusement parks. Read on · Archive
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