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From: Ross Clark
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: The Great Exhibition opened, London (1-5-1851)
Date: Thu, 2 May 2024 09:36:21 +1200
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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"Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations" -- the first
of the great World's Fairs of the 19th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition
The Crystal Palace, the vast central building of the Exhibition, had a
complex after-life. It was rebuilt (rather differently) in a different
location, and survived as a kind of Events Centre until destroyed by
fire in 1936.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Palace
Meanwhile, Crystal (no relation) is most interested in the _Official
Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue_ of the Exhibition, a massive
1400-page inventory of the modern world's productions. "Dozens of new
formations are listed....The Catalogue sometimes provides the first
recorded use of an item..." (a reference to OED). His first-use examples
are:
sulphurator "An apparatus for sprinkling plants with flowers of sulfur,
fumigating with sulfur, or the like."
Tahiti cane "The sugar cane, Saccharum officinarum."
More interestingly, one of the new industrial wonders of the Exhibition
was--- pay toilets! Designed by George Jennings, and apparently referred
to colloquially as "monkey closets", they cost one penny to use. Whence
the expression "spend a penny", which survived longer than the Crystal
Palace.
Oh yes, it was also May Day, with all that that entails. Since Tennyson
is in the air (at least on a.u.e.) let's recall:
You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow ’ll be the happiest time of all the glad new-year,—
Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;
For I ’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I ’m to be Queen o’ the May.