Historians and researchers have finally solved a long-standing mystery behind one of Victorian England’s iconic architectural wonders. The answer? Simple, standardized nuts and bolts. That may not sound too exciting today, but in 1851, the invention allowed engineers to build the Crystal Palace at previously unimaginable speeds.
While the Great Exhibition of 1851 showcased Britain’s most advanced and acclaimed industrial capabilities across a number of exhibits, the five-month-long event’s crown jewel undoubtedly came from architect Joseph Paxton. At over 1,827-feet-long, the Crystal Palace was the world’s largest building at the time, and featured a huge glass roof supported by 3,300 cast iron columns. For nearly 175 years, however, a mystery has left historians puzzled—how was it possible for Paxton’s workers to complete construction in only 190 days?
A study published in The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology now has solved the mystery. According to John Gardner, a professor of English literature at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), the Crystal Palace relied on a revolutionary screw thread designed by a man named Joseph Whitmore.
Before Whitworth’s standardized concept, every screw and bolt was unique to one another without standardized measurements. This meant that lost screws or broken bolts could easily grind construction projects down to a standstill, at least until someone fashioned new replacements. Given its immense size and complexity, the Crystal Palace alone needed 30,000 nuts and bolts—and yet requiring so many pieces somehow didn’t hinder the building’s construction.
“The forms of screw threads used in Crystal Palace buildings have not been recorded in any of the surviving drawings,” Gardner and his co-author Ken Kiss wrote in their paper. “Furthermore, none of the rare existing bolt threads have been measured, recorded and published, until [now].”
The reason behind…
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