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Historicalrangeinfrastructure

The Great Exhibition

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations opened in Hyde Park on 1 May 1851 in Joseph Paxton's prefabricated iron and glass building, itself an industrial product assembled from standard components in months. Around six million admissions were taken over the season, many of them by excursion train — the railway network being what made a national audience possible. Its surplus funded the museums and colleges of South Kensington. It is best read as the moment Britain chose to display the transition as an accomplished fact, at the very point when its industrial lead was about to be contested.

Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.

Subjects

Evidence

Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.

Recorded on The British railway network

  1. Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
  2. Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
  3. Hargreaves devises the spinning jenny
  4. Boston Tea Party
  5. Crompton completes the spinning mule
  6. The rotative engine turns a shaft
  7. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
  8. Cartwright patents the power loom
  9. Arkwright's patents are overturned
  10. The Stockton and Darlington Railway opens
  11. The Rainhill trials settle the question of traction
  12. First Assam tea auctioned in London
  13. The Great Exhibition
  14. The 1908 Olympic marathon fixes 26 miles 385 yards
  15. The first London Marathon

Related

Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.