The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations

THE GREAT EXHIBITION

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y 1851 Britain was the world’s leading industrial country – it was called the ‘workshop of the world’. British factories supplied the world with goods, and British firms provided banking and insurance services for much of the rest of the world. London was the most important city in the world.

Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, had the idea of staging a huge exhibition in London, where every country in the world would be invited to display the products of their industry. Albert said that such an exhibition would encourage friendship between different countries.

What was the Great Exhibition?

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he Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations was an international exhibition that took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 11 October 1851. It was the first in a series of World's Fair exhibitions of culture and industry that were to become a popular 19th-century feature. The Great Exhibition was organized by Henry Cole and Prince Albert. It was attended by numerous notable figures of the time, including Charles Darwin, Samuel Colt, Charles Dickens and members of the Orléanist Royal Family.

The Exhibition was designed to show worldwide progress: machinery, manufactured goods, sculptures, raw material, and all the fruits of the growing industry were shown in the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and plate-glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution.

This universal exposition guided the gaze of men towards progress and modernity, demonstrating the supremacy of the United Kingdom as the most advanced industry. Several countries sent their products. The English colonies sent a variety of products that captured the imagination of the British public. Every country was given its own section with the name of its country above it to share between its own artists and inventors. British articles occupied more than half of the space of the Crystal Palace.

Between May and October the Exhibition attracted over six million visitors; many of them were ordinary workers and labourers. From Mondays to Thursdays there was specially reduced admission price of one shilling (5 pounds). The highest attendance for a single day was 109,915.

The Exhibition made a profit of £186,000. This was used to build the Royal Albert hall, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. All of these places are now visited by millions of people every year.

How was the exhibition created?

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hen the decision had been made to go ahead with the exhibition, The Queen formed "The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851" and put Prince Albert in charge to organise it. He gathered together a group of people to come up with the final design, comprising of great architects from the time and also famous engineers.

However, it soon became clear that the size of the building required would cost a lot of money if it was to be made from the traditional materials of brick and stone that the committee had suggested. It would have also taken 3 million bricks, which would have required all of the brick kilns in the country working together and ignoring every other bit of building work that needed doing at the time.

Eventually, the committee heard about a famous garden designer called Joseph Paxton had created great greenhouses made of glass, quite cheaply and in a short space of time. He was asked to come up with a design for a glass building to house the exhibition, and came up with sketches for the design in just two days, which were immediately approved by the committee.

The final design was one of the most amazing structures the world

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