Paris show is 40 YEARS young: Our special correspondent reports from the French capital

摘要

Silmo celebrated its fortieth birthday in Paris over the long weekend of October 19 - 21, 2007. France's optical fair, which now rounds off each year's European events calendar, has in every sense come a long way over the four decades of its history. The show began in 1967 as a shop window for France's ophthalmic frame makers, held over a full week in Spring in the traditional centre for frame manufacture, Oyonnax, some hundreds of kilometres south-east of the capital. (It was said by some visitors that the show could not have been held earlier, because you could never have driven in or out again over the snowy local mountain roads.) The first year's 58 exhibitors, occupying a mere 1500m~(2), were up to 228, taking four times the space, four years later - and by that time the optical industry had asserted its rising status by a name change. Launched to showcase the products of a mere plastics industry subdivision, it now became 'Salon Internationale de la lunetterie, de l'optique oculaire et du materiel pour opticiens': Silmo.