The Great Exhibition opens at the Crystal Palace
- Date
- 1 May - 15 October 1851
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- United Kingdom (London)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations opened in Hyde Park, London, on 1 May 1851 and ran until 15 October, the first in the great series of international world's fairs.
Championed by Prince Albert and Henry Cole, it was housed in the Crystal Palace, a vast prefabricated structure of cast iron and glass designed by Joseph Paxton, itself a triumph of industrial construction erected in under forty weeks. Some 100,000 exhibits from Britain, its empire and other nations displayed machinery, manufactures, raw materials and design, presenting industrialisation as a force for progress, free trade and international exchange. Around six million visits were recorded, roughly equivalent to a third of Britain's population, and the surplus funded the South Kensington museums and educational institutions. The exhibition both celebrated and advertised Britain's mid-century industrial pre-eminence and inspired a wave of comparable expositions in Paris, New York, Vienna and beyond, making it a defining cultural event of the Industrial Revolution.
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Empires active in 1 May - 15 October 1851
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Hokusai's 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa'c. 1831
- First Impressionist Exhibition opens in Paris15 April 1874
- Premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony7 May 1824
- Nietzsche's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'1883–1885
- Freud publishes 'The Interpretation of Dreams'1900 (completed 1899)
- Rabindranath Tagore wins the Nobel Prize in Literature1913
Further reading
The wider story
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