![]() The new Crystal Palace added a vaulted roof along the length of the nave, as well as vaulted side wings (one of which burned down in 1866). There was a kite-drawn carriage for traveling without horses on windy days a corset that opened upon impact during a train accident to allow the female victim to breathe instantly and a silent alarm clock, which instead of ringing at the designated time, turned the bed on its side and dumped its occupant into a tub of cold water.Īfter the exhibition closed, turning a profit of £186,000 (which would eventually be used to purchase land in South Kensington where the Victoria and Albert Museum would be built), the Crystal Palace was relocated to the London suburb of Sydenham in 1854 and rebuilt on an even larger scale. The Great Exhibition, however, also encouraged the useless and the preposterous along with the inventive and the ingenious. New and important inventions that were exhibited in 1851 included the electric telegraph, the Singer sewing machine, Goodyear rubber, the Colt revolver, and Schweppes soft drinks such as ginger ale. The organizers were concerned that the reigning aesthetic style in furniture and the fine arts was leading to large, dark, heavy, ornate objects, now commonly referred to as "Victorian." The fine arts, such as statues and stained glass, were included to demonstrate beauty, so that manufacturers might be inspired to apply good design principles to their manufactured goods. ![]() Process, as raw materials-lumps of coal, bales of cotton-were taken by heavy machinery-steam engines, hydraulic presses, power looms-to manufacture works of industry such as mirrors, tables, cloth, anything one might find in the home. The ordering of the exhibits, therefore, replicated the industrial manufacturing ![]() In the British half, the exhibits were arranged in four main groups: raw materials, machinery, manufactures, and the fine arts. To the west of the transept were the products of Britain and its colonies to the east were those of the rest of the world. Inside, the Crystal Palace divided the world into two groups. Moreover, the glass walls and roof provided a maximum of daylight and a minimum of enclosure, prompting many visitors to describe the building as a "fairy palace." Inside, it was impossible for visitors to discern the size of the building, and the Crystal Palace was in all likelihood the first building in which a person, standing at one end, could not see the opposite end. So large as to be virtually boundless-the Crystal Palace covered some nineteen acres-the interior was defined only by the three-dimensional grid of coordinates that the regularly spaced iron stanchions and girders provided. The Crystal Palace, which received its nickname from Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) of Punch magazine, was unique at the time for its size and transparent qualities. ![]() Men and women from all social classes mingled inside the Crystal Palace, a remarkable occurrence in a society still reeling from Chartism and the revolutions of 1848. In between, there were more than six million paid entrances, or approximately one-fifth of the British population, allowing for multiple visits and visitors from abroad. 1837–1901) on May Day 1851, and closed six months later on 11 October. The Great Exhibition was organized by Prince Albert (1819–1861) and the Royal Society of Arts to improve the quality of industrial design in Britain and to demonstrate the advantages of British manufactures by putting them in competition with goods from around the world. It was built from start to finish in just seven months, at a cost of £170,000. Featuring modular, prefabricated, iron and glass construction, the Crystal Palace stretched 1,848 feet long, 72 feet wide, and 64 feet high, with a barrel-vaulted transept rising to 104 feet. Generally regarded as the first modern building, the Crystal Palace was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton (1801–1865) for the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, the first world's fair, held in Hyde Park, London, during the summer of 1851. ![]()
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