Page - 111 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

111 There were more and more inventions, some significant and some less emi- nent, such as those advocated in the evening edition of the ‘Grazer Zeitung’ on 3 October 1857: ‘Latest invention / in the field of chemistry! / With greatest benefit appli- cable to any household, especially for the hospitality trade and / such larger establishments / Washing Method / in which way, according to the recipe, the laundry is not / ground, you need very little wood / time and effort and signif- icantly save on soap / instead of using 2 pounds you just need ¼ pound /. The inventor guarantees the genuineness of the method and ensures that there is no / fraud behind it. These recipes / are available in a sealed condition for the whole of Styria: / in Graz in the toy shop of Mr J. A. Sanoner in Murgasse.’ The city of Graz itself was at the beginning of modern economic growth in the middle of the 19th century. The guilds had been dissolved, and the era of economic liberalism was beginning. The economy expanded almost explosive- ly, and the first big wave of industrialisation commenced. At that time, world expositions boasted magnificent technology and sym- bolized that the dream of mankind of ‘higher, faster, further’ finally seemed to come true with the beat of the steam engines. At the World Exposition in Vi- enna in 1873, a monumental show fountain designed by the sculptor Baptiste Jules Klagman and cast by Antoine Durénne in Paris illustrated the connection between art and technology. Its final resting place was to be in the Stadtpark (Graz city park). Graz joined this almost global trend of expositions, albeit on a modest scale, and organised the Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition at the Agricul- tural Test Facility in 1870. Later, the industrial hall was built for this purpose, in which the Graz Trade Fair, the first of its kind in Austria, was to take place in 1906. The stock market crash of 1873 put an end to the economic boom, but the belief in the economic upswing still seems to have been unbroken, and at the beginning of the 1880s the Graz economy had also overcome the recession. The following late founding phase (Gründerzeit) brought the city industrially and technologically forward again. On the downside of economic prosperity, however, were increasingly the lower social classes, day labourers, maidservants and industrial workers. Their working and living conditions were dismal. About half of the dwellings in Graz consisted only of a room and a kitchen. A lack of basic sanitation facilities was the rule. The share of substandard basement and attic dwellings was above the average of the entire monarchy and even higher than in Vienna and Prague. A lack of basic sanitation facilities was the rule in these dwellings: