The Corliss engine powered more than just the 1876 Centennial.
In New Orleans, for example, at the 1884 World's Industrial and Cotton
Centennial, President Chester Arthur from his office in Washington, DC, (he
chose not to come in person) opened the event by touching a button to a
telegraph line that started the Corliss going.
Once the thing was powered up, people could hardly hear each other talk, it
was so noisy, so reporters related.
I wrote a bit about this in *Southern Ladies and Suffragists: Julia Ward
Howe and Women's Rights at the 1884 New Orleans World's Fair*.
Miki

-- 
Miki Pfeffer, Ph D
*A** New Orlean**s Author i**n Mark Twain's Court: *
*Letters from Grace King's New England Sojourns   *
(LSU Press, 2019)
*Southern Ladies and Suffragists: Julia Ward Howe and Women's Rights at the
1884 New Orleans World's Fair   *(University Press of Mississippi, 2014)