DescriptionThe 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 industries, technology, and the arts. William Sterndale Bennett composed music for the opening ceremony. 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 Lucas Brothers and Sir John Kelk. They were intended to be permanent and were constructed in an un-ornamented style with the intention of adding decoration in later years as funds allowed. Much of the construction was of cast iron, 12,000 tons worth, though the façades were brick. Picture galleries occupied three sides of a rectangle on the south side of the site; the largest, with a frontage on 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.
The opening took place on 1 May 1862. Queen Victoria, still in mourning for her consort Prince Albert did not attend. Instead, her cousin the Duke of Cambridge presided from a throne sited beneath the western dome. An opening address was delivered by Earl Granville, chairman of Her Majesty's Commissioners, the group responsible for the organisation of the event.
An official closing ceremony took place on 1 November 1862, but the exhibition remained open to the public until 15 November 1862. Over six million people attended.
