Inside Machinery Hall, Archie’s exhibit was dwarfed by seemingly endless rows of state-of-the-art mechanical devices and tools, with special attractions such as Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, the world’s largest conveyor belt, and a cutting-edge power plant that generated electricity for the whole fair. At night the fairgrounds were illuminated by electric lights, thanks to an early alternating-current system developed by Archie’s friend Nikola Tesla. The world had never seen anything like it.

“In the mammoth corridors of Machinery Hall at the World’s Fair the zenith of nineteenth century progress in the mechanical arts was reached, and the artisans of every civilized clime learned something of practical benefit from the unfolded genius of the world’s greatest inventors. Perhaps most highly regarded by fellow inventors was Professor Campion’s remarkable anthropomorphic machine, which imagination allows could be of varied benefit to mankind.”
—Henry Davenport Northrop, Pictorial History of the World’s Fair (Union Publishing House, 1893)