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"Neither crystal nor a palace, it was a bazaar," complained someone of the overwhelming display of over 100,000 articles that occupied eleven miles of stalls. Besides displaying the most recent products of Western industrial mechanization (a hydraulic press, marine and fire engines and locomotives) the exhibit displayed an unprecedented accumulation that included...a knife with 1,851 blades, a cross between a Christmas tree and a cactus, the "Silent Alarum Bed," which would throw the sleeper on the floor at a certain time, and the "talking telegraph," where a head in a box moved its mouth while code symbols appeared above it like flags. |
  Perhaps no one expressed their feelings about this new era better than (Queen) Victoria herself, a woman whose attachment to objects became so obsessive in her last years that she would not allow any of her innumerable possessions to be thrown away or even altered, and if something - a carpet, a curtain - fell into total disrepair, she would have it replicated to perfection.
The Artificial Kingdom, pp. 32 and 33 Image: Victoria and Albert |
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