Crystal Palace

Exhibition of 1851 marked one of the positive turning points, with a separate boiler plant providing steam to power exhibits in the enormous Crystal Palace, a 600-meter-long glass structure. A similar exliibition, complete with separate boiler house, was held in New York two years later. 

Some of the most highly acclaimed displays commenced around 1865 at the Crystal Palace where Mr C. T. Brock set a standard for brilliance and colour which was said to defy competition. This improvement was due, in no small part, to the introduction of metal powders and chlorates into the pyrotechnic mixes, an innovation which is used even today. 

Briggs, A. 1979, Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace Impact and Images of the Industrial Revolution, Thames Hudson, London. 

Hobhouse, H. 2002, The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition Science, Art and Productive Industry a History of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, Ath-lone, London. 

Glass is one of our most important building materials. In 1851, the windows in the Crystal Palace used 300,000 panes, which accounted for 33% of England s aimual production of glass. Biosphere 2 (built in the late 1980s) relies entirely on glass to separate the interior from Biosphere 1. 

This situation lasted until, in 1854, a daring and creative industrialist, Elisha Otis, invented and tested in public the first elevator provided with a safety brake which was simple and robust enough to convince the public. The public demonstration was made at the New York Crystal Palace where the first World Fair of America was held. 

Whitbread Brewery, Samlesbury Dairies at Appleby and Lockerbie Bass Charrington brewery effluent. Runcorn Bletchley Sports Complex roof structure Crystal Palace telecommunications tower Litchfield TV mast... 

In 1854 Elisha Otis was at the Crystal Palace exposition in New York. After being hauled up in an elevator in an open-sided shaft, haUw up he had the rope cut with an axe, calling All safe, gentlemen . The shaft conveyance safety arrest mechanism (safety dogs) then took over. 

While cadmium yellow pigment was at first very rare due to the scarcity of the metal, it became more available to artists in the 1830s after cadmium started to be produced commercially in Upper Silesia (now Poland). A reference to cadmium sulfide is made in George Field s Practical Journal of 1809, where a yellow cadmium water color sample is discussed. Cadmium yellow was also exhibited by today s well known Artist Supply company, Winsor and Newton, at the important Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851, in England. 

The mathematical regularity of the proportions of the Crystal Palace helped simplify construction. Paxton determined the basic unit of length for the building not by some aesthetically based golden section, but by the requirements of the exhibition space and a fundamental technological constraint in 1850, sheets of glass longer than about four feet were not only very costly to... 

The uncommon depth of the girders and trusses— roughly three feet— added to the grace of the Crystal Palace when a visitor looked down one of the long avenues. And in Paxton s usual custom, this aesthetic feature served a structural purpose as well attaching the trusses and girders to the supporting iron columns not only at the top but also at their relatively deep bottom pro-... 

While questions about the strength and stability of the Crystal Palace arose from the beginning, its design and construction made no compromises with safety. Wherever the girders and trusses did... 

The Crystal Palace was unique not only in its structural details but also in its maintenance and decoration. The floor, for example, was laid with a space between the boards so that dirt and debris could fall or be swept into the cracks, preserving a neat and dustless promenade, noor-sweeping machines were originally to be used to push the dust into the half-inch spaces between the boards, but they proved unnecessary as women s dresses accomplished the same end. Small boys were employed to crawl beneath the floor boards and collect bits of paper that might otherwise accumulate and present a Are hazard. 

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