The Eiffel Tower, a global landmark in Paris, had to shut down on Monday, September 7, after the staff went on strike, protesting a request by a visiting delegation of the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) that appeared to limit its interactions with female employees.

This episode has grabbed global headlines and has drawn India into an unwelcome controversy that has occasioned editorials in the Indian press on religion, gender, and the role of governments in such matters. French authorities are investigating the matter; BAPS has expressed regret while disputing the allegations. The Government of India has distanced itself from this matter, terming the BAPS-Eiffel Tower controversy a "matter purely between the entities concerned".

As a science communicator and museum professional of four decades, this controversy has motivated me to tell a different Eiffel Tower story: a story which is a product of a nineteenth-century idea that reshaped the modern world—the international industrial exhibition.

That story began not in Paris but in London, in 1851. The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations opened in Hyde Park's Crystal Palace on May 1, 1851. Over six million people visited during its five-and-a-half-month run, viewing more than 100,000 exhibits of industry, science, manufacture, and art from across the world—the first experiment in mass public education through spectacle, letting ordinary people walk through the exhibition and see what factories, laboratories, and workshops the world over were creating.

The........

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