The Paris trade fair

Roll up roll up

For a spring bank holiday weekend in France, the weather has been crapppppppy, not much sun, grey skies and intermittent rain ... not too rockin' hot.

So rather than spend my day off in front of the computer, i went to see the annual trade fair in Paris.

It's in the same place where i had to go for the training open day thing a few weeks ago, but today there was lots more interesting things to see; stands from Africa, the Arab world, a lot of stuff for commerce équitable (fair trade) ... and much more importantly we can eat food from the four corners of the planet ;-)

If you're in Paris it really is a good way to spend an afternoon out as long as you're prepared to walk for miles (it's all indoors) and brave the hordes of impatient and huffy frenchies.

My real motivation for going, however, was to check out the participants in this years best invention contest.

A brief history of which is underneath :


The Concours Lépine

At the start of the 1900's, the general economic climate in France was very tough for every one, even more so for the small businesses of the day.

The then prefect - Louis Lépine - wanted to try to do something to help and so created a contest to find the most original ideas from small hardware makers and toy makers who were being hit the hardest.

So he organised, in 1901, the first Concours exhibition - competition exhibition - where the best idea was awarded the modest sum of 100 francs

Today, the competition is open to anyone and the prize is given to any original invention that can prove its usefulness - as long as a patent has been acquired for it.

There are however some little ruses that can be used to increase the chances of winning : show that we can use the 'thing' every day or even demonstrate how it can help people with mobility issues.

As a general rule, about half of the inventions recieve an award.

Over the years the competition has given to the world some of the most mundane and widely used objects : the ball point pen, the two stroke motor, the steam iron and even contact lenses ...

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I didn' t realise it, but taking photos is strictly verbotten and i had a bit of grief from some of the people. But being a foolhardy tenacious kinda guy i managed to sneak a few shots off ...


This first photo is a harness for dogs !!

yup, you can now strap fido into or if you prefer onto your car and not worry about running around in the back seat whilst you're doing 200mph up the motorway with the police on your tail.

The guy was the only one who was happy to cooperate with a 'british tourist over for the day to check out Paris' - Merci beaucoup M'sieur :-)



Next up, it's the snow skate : an alternative to the snowboard.

It's highly flexible, made of carbon, good for doing tricks, weighs in at about 12kgs and costs from about 1200€.

I quite like this one and i hope i gets somewhere; it reminds me of when i had my BMX when i was a kid.

Again, the guy was happy to let me take two shots but no more - things got a bit dodgy after that, with people threatening to call security (gulp).


This one here, i'm really mega mega pleased to have got away with it - it's from the Peugeot car stand where they were showing cars that can run on bio-degradable fuel, ethanol mixes and stuff like that.

This here is a fully functioning GT model which runs on Green diesel.

They also had a lovely little speedster that i filmed for about thirty seconds, but good sense told me to stop.


And that's about it.

There were lots of other stands, and a lot of dross - i'll be interested to see who wins and if anything comes of it.

And in a typical touristy stylie, another photo of La Veille Dame for the album.

Taken from the roof of the exhibition hall - i doubt that i'll ever go back there so i thought i'd make the most of the occasion.

I had to show i was in thivk english tourist mode, after all ;-)