历届世博会简况：英国1851年“万国工业博览会”英语介绍

    英国1851年万国工业博览会，展出天数 160天，参观人数604万。　　

　　On Thursday 1st May 1851 Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria officially opened The Exhibition of Industry of All Nations, now better known as the Great Crystal Palace Exhibition.

　　The project took almost 2½ years to come to fruition and it’s leading light was Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert, Prince Consort. In 1848 he placed a proposal before British Parliament to set up a self supporting exhibition of the products of British Industry. However, Albert cannot be credited with inventing the concept of an Industrial Exhibition as the formula had already been successfully employed in England, but most particularly in France, on many prior occasions. At the end of the 18th century the Marquis d’Aveze – Commissioner of the Royal Manufactories of the Gobelins, of Sèvres and of the Savonnerie initiated the first of what was to become a series of Expositions which culminated in the highly successful French Industrial Exposition of 1844. After the success of the 1844 Exposition proposals were put to Parliament detailing the benefits such an Exhibition held in England would have on commerce and the British economy as a whole. These initial proposals were met with absolutely no support and it was not until 1848, and the involvement of the Prince Consort, that progress began to be made towards realising the event.

　　The Exhibition needed a specially built venue and the Royal Commission which was set up to manage the preparation, planning and running of the event considered numerous building designs and even prepared some of their own. However the design that was finally used, which boasted a huge semicircular glass roof over the transept, is credited to Sir Joseph Paxton. He worked closely with the Royal Commission and building contractors Fox & Henderson to create a magnificent building design using cast iron and glass which was situated in Hyde Park. The final building utilised 550 tons of wrought iron, 3,500 tons of cast iron, 30 miles of gutters, 202 miles of sash bars and over 600,000 feet of wooden flooring. The building, being 1851 feet long by 456 feet at its widest point, covered approximately 19 acres and was clad in just under 900,000 feet of glass which gave rise to its name, the ‘Crystal Palace’. The size of the construction required that the building had to have its own fire brigade inside to protect the exhibition items and the public. Twelve large fire engines and teams of trained firemen were on constant station within the galleries.

　　Early on during the planning process it was decided that rather than restrict the Exhibition to solely British enterprise the event should be open to the entire world. This approach instantaneously elevated the undertaking above any other that had gone before and secured the Victorians’ dominant position as a global power in design, construction and industry. To this end official invitations were sent out to all Foreign Governments, States and Continents, as well as to British Colonies and possessions to submit items for the exhibition. The official invitation to Guernsey inhabitants was printed in The Star ( Gsy ) newspaper on Saturday 30th March 1850. Over the next few weeks there followed numerous meetings to appoint a local Committee to promote the issue within the Island and select items to be submitted to the Royal Commission for consideration. By early May of that year the Committee was formed and it then set about announcing to the local population what categories they might submit work in for consideration. It is believed that the items chosen locally for display at the Great Exhibition would have been put on display in Guernsey sometime around the beginning of March 1851 after which point they were transported to England.