In the nearly six months it was open, the Exposition, the central event of the Florentine spring and summer, welcomed over one hundred thousand visitors, with a peak in the two weeks around the August holiday of Ferragosto (about 60,000 tickets sold) and most notably on Sunday, August 25 (over 10,000 tickets). Many of these visitors were not particularly interested in scientific matters and had only a vague idea of who the persons celebrated in the exhibition were, and what the machines and instruments exhibited were used for. To meet the needs of the public, Pietro Pagnini began to organize guided tours and Umberto Repetti, Corsini's assistant at the Istituto di Storia delle Scienze [Institute of the History of Science], was requested to prepare a brief guide to be used by the visitors. At the same time, the head of the press bureau, Dino Brogi, had published in the major Italian newspapers a series of articles of educational nature celebrating Italian science. The price of a ticket for the exhibition was 5 lire (reduced to only one lira in the two weeks around Ferragosto) and the opening hours were 9-12:30 am - 4-8 pm (winter) and 9-12:30 am - 6-11 pm (summer).
