Leaders of the World facts for kids
Leaders of the World was an electric advertising sign in New York City from 1910 to 1912 and one of the largest such signs in New York City when it was built. It displayed an animated scene of a Roman chariot race along with a text message for the advertiser. The sign began operation on July 19, 1910, and was destroyed in a storm on February 22, 1912.
Construction
The sign was erected by the Rice Electric Display Company of Dayton, Ohio, on the roof of the Hotel Normandie, on Broadway and 38th Street, near Herald Square, taking approximately 90 days to complete. The first evening of operation was July 19, 1910, at which it "attracted such a crowd that the police had difficulty in keeping the people in check". The sign had approximately 20,000 electric light bulbs, used 600 horsepower (450 kW), included more than 95 miles (153 km) of electrical wire, had 70,000 electrical connections, and weighed 3 tonnes (3.0 long tons; 3.3 short tons). At the time of its construction, it had ten times as many electric bulbs as the next largest electric sign on Broadway. The sign was constructed off-site and required eight railroad cars to transport the pieces to New York.
At the sign's commissioning, Elwood E. Rice gave a celebration party on the roof of the Marlborough Hotel, two blocks south of the Normandie at 38th street, with a good view of the sign. The party included an orchestra and buffet lunch, and was by invitation only.
Description
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The sign had an animated scene of a Roman chariot race which repeated every 30 seconds. The scene used a series of flashing lights for the chariots, horses, and drivers moving in one direction, and the stadium audience moving in the opposite direction.
At the top of the sign was a programmable display capable of showing an advertiser's message in a 3 line by 18 character matrix, with individual characters being 1.3 metres (4 ft 3 in) tall by 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) wide. In 1911, a contest was held in which people could submit "snappy catch phrases or slogans" that could be used by the sign's advertisers. The contest was publicized in 18 cities including Paris, attracting 500,000 entries that competed for $15,000 in cash prizes.
At the time of its construction, it was one of the largest animated signs built to date, being 72 feet (22 m) tall and 90 feet (27 m) wide. The chariot race scene included horses 20 feet (6.1 m) high by 40 feet (12 m) long, with 8-foot (2.4 m) diameter wheels; these were designed to appear to be normal size when viewed from street level. The incandescent bulbs ranged from 2 to 32 candle power, with another bank of 100W tungsten lamps. Approximately 2750 electrical switches controlled the lights, requiring two 10 horsepower (7.5 kW) motors to operate the switches. The sign included no moving parts; the appearance of motion was created by lights flashing at high speed. For example, one of the horses had 8 sets of lights outlining various positions of their legs, with the illumination changing quickly enough that the human eye perceived continuous motion.
Destruction in a storm
The sign was destroyed in a record-setting storm which hit New York on February 22, 1912. The wind broke the sign into two pieces, leaving the upper section dangling, after which the Fire Department issued an order to have the rest of the sign taken down. Sustained winds as high as 110 miles per hour (180 km/h) were reported. The American Meteorological Society's Monthly Weather Review noted an extreme wind velocity of 120 miles per hour (190 km/h) and commented that "The largest damage was to signs and plate-glass windows."
Literary allusion
This Side of Paradise (1920), the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald, references the sign in the first chapter, where protagonist Amory Blaine observes New York City at night for the first time, as lit by the sign:
... but this time he saw it by electric light, and romance gleamed from the chariot-race sign on Broadway and from the women's eyes at the Astor, where he and young Paskert from St. Regis' had dinner. When they walked down the aisle of the theatre, greeted by the nervous twanging and discord of untuned violins and the sensuous, heavy fragrance of paint and powder, he moved in a sphere of epicurean delight. Everything enchanted him.
As the sign was used as a vehicle for advertising in real life, James L. W. West III surmises that this allusion serves to foreshadow Amory's employment at an advertising agency later in the story. After Amory's firing from the agency leads to his loss of wealth and status, his girlfriend Rosalind Connage leaves him for a rich man. West wrote that the theme of "authority of money, its power to subvert genuine love and human feeling" is present in all of Fitzgerald's works, and that the sign in the novel was a symbol for commerce.
