Exhibitions. The earlier beginnings of Industrial Exhibitions, like all great movements, are not particularly easy to define. The first exhibition of anything like national importance, however, seems to have been the one originated by the Marquis d'Avèze at Paris, 1798, though previous to this a show of agricultural and other machinery had been held by the Society of Arts in London (1756), and another exhibition had been given at Prague in 1791. A second exhibition of greatly improved kind was opened at Paris in 1802; a third in 1805; and hence arose the custom of holding such displays triennially, continued with slight interruption for half a century. It should be mentioned that the specimens exhibited on these occasions were essentially of French production, and care was taken to exclude any article of foreign character. The impetus given to the movement by the Paris displays was felt over Europe, and even reached the United States. Between the years 1820 and 1850 exhibitions were held at Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, St Petersburg, Stockholm, Moscow, Lisbon, Madrid, New York, Philadelphia, and numerous other towns. Nor did the United Kingdom escape the infection, though here the promoters of such undertakings had to struggle against much apathy and even opposition.
To Ireland belongs the credit of the first display of noticeable merit. This was the Exhibition of Irish Industries, held by the Royal Dublin Society at their rooms in 1829, and the association continued the practice triennially for several years. The Society of Arts in London also held a number of exhibitions illustrative of the manufactures, commerce, and agriculture of the country, and the Cornwall Polytechnic Society energetically laboured in a similar direction by holding periodical exhibitions to illustrate the mineral wealth of that county, and the mechanical appliances necessary for mining. From this may be said to have originated the happy idea of holding in various large towns exhibitions descriptive of the industrial work carried on in the locality. Manchester led the way with a display of everything concerned in the manufacture of cotton; Liverpool followed with an exhibition of the raw produce brought to that seaport, and the shipbuilding that rendered such trade possible; Leeds held an exhibition of the material and processes involved in the flax and woollen trades; and Birmingham (1849) fairly surpassed them all with an excellently arranged show of the numerous useful and ornamental forms into which metals can be wrought. The Birmingham Exhibition may be said to have had an important influence in bringing about the first great exhibition of 1851.
For some time past the English government had been urged without success to organise an exhibition in London of a really national character, illustrating the arts of Great Britain and Ireland. In the spring months of 1849 the Society of Arts, being greatly influenced in the matter by Prince Albert, sketched the outline of a great exhibition of the industries of all nations, and proposed that such exhibition should be held at London in 1851. In July the prince in the name of the society applied to the government for the appointment of a Royal Commission to organise and manage such an exhibition. As a result of the agitation then set on foot, the Commission was appointed early in 1850, with the prince at its head; and the exhibition was opened by the Queen in Hyde Park, May 1, 1851. It was held in a vast structure of iron and glass, called the Crystal Palace (now located at Sydenham), and planned by Sir Joseph Paxton (q.v.). The building was 1851 feet long by 408 wide, with an additional width of 48 feet for half that length; the highest portion was a centre transept 108 feet high; the area covered was 19 acres, equal to seven times that of St Paul's. The exhibitors numbered nearly 15,000, about equally divided between British and foreign contributors. The cost of the structure was £170,000 (for use and waste, not for absolute ownership), which in addition to the other expenses down to the close of the exhibition made a total outlay of £292,795. The entire number of visitors was 6,039,195, averaging 41,938 per day. The total receipts from admission and other sources amounted to £505,107, leaving a surplus of £200,000.
The next exhibition of any importance was the one of art and industries held in a specially erected structure at Dublin, 1853, mainly through the enterprise and munificence of Mr Dargan. It resulted in a very heavy pecuniary loss, as did the New York International Exhibition of the same year, and the Paris Exhibition of 1855. Between 1853 and 1857 exhibitions of more or less interest and practical value were opened at New Brunswick, Madras, Munich, Edinburgh, and Manchester.
The second great international exhibition of 1862 was held in a building at South Kensington, occupying an area of about 24 acres. In its main building it was composed of massive brickwork, but the annexes and two cupolas of vast magnitude were chiefly of glass, iron, and wood. The total area of covered space was nearly 1,300,000 feet, including corridors, staircases, &c. About 700,000 square feet were ground-floor space, the remainder galleries. So excellently were the arrangements carried out that the exhibitors had 1,032,352 square feet of horizontal flooring and 284,670 square feet of vertical wall-space. About one-half was allotted to the United Kingdom and its colonies, the other half to foreign countries. The total number of exhibitors was 28,653, of whom 26,348 were in one or other of thirty-six industrial classes, the remainder in one or other of four fine art classes. There were 3370 paintings in oil and water colours, 1275 etchings and engravings, 983 architectural drawings, &c., and 901 pieces of sculpture. The exhibition was open 171 days, nearly a month longer than that of 1851. The visitors numbered in all 6,211,103 persons, but though the number was greater than in 1851 the average per day was less. The receipts from all sources (admission at the doors, season tickets, refreshment contracting, &c.) amounted to the grand total of £448,632, but the cost of the building was so great (£320,000, virtually for six months' use only) that the receipts did not cover the outlay, and a deficit of about £10,000 was the result.
Passing over exhibitions held at Constantinople (1863) and Bayonne (1864), we next come to the Dublin Exhibition of 1865, produced under the auspices of a joint-stock company, which proved a great failure. During the few years that followed exhibitions of more or less national character were held at Cologne (1865), Oporto (1865), Stockholm (1866), Melbourne (1866), and Agra (1867). In 1867 came the Paris Exhibition, which in its general arrangement and magnitude of conception surpassed anything that had yet taken place. This was a really wonderful undertaking. The building was a vast oval, 1550 feet by 1250, with a series of twelve concentric galleries running round it, and a small garden in the centre. In each gallery a separate branch of science and art was illustrated, and the entire oval was divided into sections, one of which was devoted to each country. The oval covered 11 acres, and the complete exhibition, counting the various annexes and outside grounds, close upon 100. The number of exhibitors was 50,226, and the total expense £800,000, half of which was defrayed by the public attendance, half by the imperial government and the Paris municipality; visitors, 10,200,000. Britain, it may be mentioned, did not figure very favourably in this exhibition—probably by reason of the want of technical education—whereas Germany, France, and Belgium showed a marked advance. Following this, exhibitions were held at Havre (1868), Amsterdam (1869), Sydney (1870), Milan, Naples, Jersey, and Peru (1871), Dublin, Copenhagen, Lyons, and Moscow (1872), and a very fine one—the greatest in fact since that of Paris—at Vienna in 1873. The last exhibition, however, was most unfortunate, suffering not only from very bad management, but from a variety of detrimental causes over which the promoters had no control, and proved in the end a huge financial failure.
In 1871 the first of a series of annual London International Exhibitions was opened. The movement, however, never became popular, and after gradually declining in favour for four years was finally relinquished in 1874. The next most important display after Vienna was the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, held in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of American Independence. The main building, in the form of a parallelogram, covered a floor-space of about 20 acres; its length was 1880 feet, and width 464. One centre and two side avenues ran along the inside of the edifice, the former being 1832 feet long by 120 feet wide—the longest avenue of that width ever known in an exhibition structure. The total area of floor-space in the various buildings amounted to about 50 acres; of this more than 1,000,000 square feet were allotted to the United States; 200,000 to Great Britain and its colonies; about 100,000 to France and French dependencies; and over 60,000 to Germany. The number of exhibitors fell below those of the preceding exhibitions at Paris and Vienna—in all about 40,000. The building was open to the public on 159 days, and the total attendance of visitors was 9,910,966; receipts, $4,300,000—a sum much below the expenditure. The Paris International Exhibition of 1878 again made an advance in magnificence and size upon all previous displays. The total area covered by the various buildings was about 80 acres, the exhibitors numbered 80,000, and the visitors 16,032,725. The Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1889 excelled all its predecessors in point of magnitude and comprehensiveness; with the included grounds it occupied an area of 173 acres. The Eiffel Tower (q.v.) was one of the principal attractions of the exhibition. Still grander in conception and scope was the World's Columbian Exposition held at Chicago in 1893, on the fourth centenary of the discovery of America by Columbus; it was attended by some 25,000,000 visitors (see CHICAGO). Innumerable minor displays have been held in other places, including Calcutta, New Orleans, Melbourne; and a series of sectional exhibitions, meant to illustrate fisheries, the colonies, health, and electricity, have been held at London and elsewhere. The Paris Exhibition of 1900 was based on a scale sufficiently vast to worthily mark the completion of the century, but, for various reasons, its success was hardly commensurate with the intention.