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Preface
The second half of the nineteenth century was interspersed with a series of international exhibitions that left an indelible mark on the period. Between May and October 1851, over 6 million people visited the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, which was held in Hyde Park, London, England. The event was massive in both scale and content and set the benchmark by which all subsequent nineteenth- century exhibitions were measured, particularly by the British.
By 1900, nearly eight times that number visited the event held in Paris to celebrate the beginning of the twentieth century. Through these exhibitions, millions were “taught, indoctrinated and mesmerised…Urban centers were re-planned to accommodate them, national economies damaged, fortunes made and wars postponed.”1 In England, they were used as a focal point for the debate about the link between industrial advance, as well as the provision of scientific and technical education. They helped to initiate a series of public and private investigations into this debate, which sometimes resulted in legislation that aided the growth of scientific and technical education.