The 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris offered exciting and often surprising aural pleasures. Military bands serenaded passersby from the bandstands; musical couleur locale was provided in the Romanian or Moroccan taverns; and never-before-heard sounds from foreign cultures accompanied spectacles of African village life, Vietnamese theater, or Javanese dance. But strangest of all was the telephone display at the pavilion of the Société générale des téléphones, where live performances on Parisian stages could be heard through acoustic tubes connected to electronic telephone lines that transmitted the sounds. Together with the exhibition of the Edison phonograph in the Galerie des Machines, the telephone exhibition counted among the best-known successes at the Exposition. The listening stations proved to be places of magic and discovery but also of uncomfortable awe, however mitigated by the secure parameters of an industrial fair. To listen to sounds that had no immediate source was to glimpse a future that might well bring with it those strange and wonderful inventions popularized in novels by Jules Verne. The prospect was both enticing and frightening.

Neither the telephone nor the phonograph was entirely new in 1889. Edison's earlier, albeit disappointing, prototype had been shown in the 1878 Exposition universelle, and telephonic transmissions from the opera house were already the attraction of the 1881 Exposition internationale de l’électricité in Paris. However, what makes their presence in the 1889 Exposition universelle so central is the fact that here, for the first time, electroacoustic technology became an integral part of an exhibition project conceived as a gigantic taxonomy of human and industrial achievement. Electricity had become one of the main themes of the Exposition, featured not only in the various inventions of the Galerie des Machines, but also, and more visibly, in such installations as the nightly illuminated fountains and the electric lights around the Exposition, especially a spectacular electric light-sculpture by Sautter-Lemonnier and the 20,000 light bulbs that illuminated Edison's exhibit (both also in the Galerie des Machines). While in 1878 electrical technology was in its “embryonic state,” now it was a fully fledged industrial force in the competitive game of highly developed nations.