1862 International Exhibition

The International of 1862, or Great London Exposition, was a world's fair. It was held from 1 May to 1 November 1862, beside the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, South Kensington, London, England, on a site that now houses museums including the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum (London).

Organization

The exposition was sponsored by the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Trade, and featured over 28,000 exhibitors from 36 countries, representing a wide range of industry, technology, and the arts. William Sterndale Bennett composed music for the opening ceremony^[1]. All told, it attracted about 6.1 million visitors. Receipts (£459,632) were slightly above cost (£458,842), leaving a total profit of £790.

It was held in South Kensington, London, on a site now occupied by the Natural History Museum. The buildings, which occupied 21 acres, were designed by Captain Francis Fowke of the Royal Engineers, and built by Charles and Thomas Lucas and Sir John Kelk at a cost of £300,000 covered by profits from the Great Exhibition of 1851. They were intended to be permanent, and were constructed in an unornamented style with the intention of adding decoration in later years as funds allowed. Much of the construction was of cast-iron, though facades were brick. Picture galleries occupied three sides of a rectangle on the south side of the site; the largest, with a frontage on the Cromwell Road was 1150 feet long, 50 feet high and 50 feet wide, with a grand triple-arched entrance. Fowke paid particular attention to lighting pictures in a way that would eliminate glare. Behind the picture galleries were the "Industrial Buildings" . These were composed of "naves" and "transepts", lit by tall clerestories, with the spaces in the angles between them filled by glass-roofed courts. Above the brick entrances on the east and west fronts were two great glass domes, each 150 feet wide and 260 feet high - at that time the largest domes ever built. The timber-framed "Machinery Galleries", the only parts of the structure intended to be temporary, stretched further north along Prince Consort Road.^[2]

Parliament declined the Government's wish to purchase the building and the materials were sold and used for the construction of Alexandra Palace.

The nave from the Western Dome. A stereoscopic view of the 1862 International Exhibition published by the London Stereoscopic Company

Exhibitions

Exhibitions included such large pieces of machinery as parts of Charles Babbage's analytical engine, cotton mills, and maritime engines by the firm of Henry Maudslay, as well as a range of smaller goods including fabrics, rugs, sculptures, furniture, plates, silver and glass wares, and wallpaper. The work shown by William Morris's decorative arts firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. attracted much notice. The exposition also introduced the use of caoutchouc for rubber production and the Bessemer process for steel manufacture.

William England led a team of stereoscopic photographers, which included William Russell Sedgfield and Stephen Thompson, to produce a series of 350 stereo views of the exhibition for the London Stereoscopic Company. These images provide a vivid three-dimensional record of the exhibition.

The exhibition also included an international chess tournament, the London 1862 chess tournament.

References

Further reading

• Dishon, Dalit, South Kensington's forgotten palace : the 1862 International Exhibition Building, PhD thesis, University of London, 2006. 3 vols.
• Hollingshead, John, A Concise History of the International Exhibition of 1862. Its Rise and Progress, its Building and Features and a Summary of all Former Exhibitions, London, 1862.
• Hunt, Robert, Handbook of the Industrial Department of the Universal Exhibition 1862, 2 vols., London, 1862.
• Tongue, Michael (2006) 3D Expo 1862, Discovery Books ISBN 91-972118-2-6

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Expo 1862

• "1862 International Exhibition". Architecture and history. Royal Institute of British Architects. http://www.architecture.com/LibraryDrawingsAndPhotographs/Albertopolis/TheStoryOf/GreatExhibition/1862InternationalExhibition.aspx. 
• London World Exposition 1862 Expo2000 article
• Images of the 1862 International Exhibition Science and Society Picture Library
• The Exhibition Building of 1862, Survey of London: volume 38: South Kensington Museums Area (1975), pp. 137–147.