The Great Exhibition of 1851 was the first international exhibition of manufactured products. It was also a hugely popular public attraction, and an event that had an enormous impact on art and design education, public entertainment, international relations, trade and tourism. The Museum of London houses a large number of objects relating to the exhibition, especially souvenirs.
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, to use its full title, was the first in a series of nineteenth-century world fairs. It was initiated by Henry Cole and organised by him, Prince Albert and members of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, as a celebration of modern design and a means to promote Britain as the world’s industrial leader. It was housed in the specially built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. This enormous glass house was designed by Joseph Paxton, and was later moved to Sydenham Hill to form the centrepiece of the new Crystal Palace Park.
The exhibits included raw materials and produce (with special prominence being given to products from the dependencies and colonies of the British Empire), machinery and demonstrations of manufacturing processes, manufactured goods, decorative and fine arts. The building was tall enough to enclose full-grown elms trees, and featured a magnificent glass fountain, a great pipe organ and a printing machine which could turn out 5,000 copies of the Illustrated London News in an hour. Considered among the highlights of the 100,000 exhibits were the Koh-i-Noor (the world’s largest known diamond), a stuffed elephant bearing a magnificent Indian howdah (seat), the first single-cast iron piano frame, and Hiram Power’s marble statue of a Greek slave. The exhibition also featured the first modern pay toilets, for which visitors ‘spent a penny’.
The exhibition was opened on 1 May 1851 by Queen Victoria. Following the unveiling, the Queen wrote in her journal that 'Green Park and Hyde Park were one mass of densely crowded human beings, in the highest good humour and most enthusiastic'.
Six million people—equivalent to a third of the entire population of Britain at the time—visited the Great Exhibition; an average of 40,000 daily attendees. Between 1 May and 15 October it generated a profit of £186,000, which was used to found the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, and to establish an educational trust to provide grants and scholarships for industrial research. Its legacy therefore continues to this day.