Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
Engineering historians have solved a riddle that’s long puzzled people about the Crystal Palace in London.
The Crystal Palace was more than 560m long with a roof supported by 3,300 cast iron columns at the time of its construction in 1851, and many people have wondered how such a giant building could be erected in just 190 days.
Now British researchers say Crystal Palace was the first building known to have used standard screw threads, which are now commonplace and essential to modern construction and engineering.
The finding explains how the giant conservatory could have been approved for construction in July 1850 and completed on 1 May 1851, in time for the opening of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.
The Crystal Palace had 30,000 nuts and bolts, and the researchers believe that the standard thread of these is what allowed the building to be constructed to a remarkably tight schedule.
Prior to standardisation, screws were fabricated by skilled craftspeople. As a result, no two screws and bolts were alike. This made it almost impossible to replace a screw once it was lost or broken, or to use nuts and bolts interchangeably.
In 1841, Joseph Whitworth invented Whitworth screw threads to standardise the pitch of the screw thread – the helical ridge on the outside of a screw or bolt. This was later known as British Standard Whitworth (BSW), the world’s first national screw thread standard.
The Crystal Palace was dismantled in 1854 and rebuilt in Sydenham, south London, where it remained until a fire destroyed it in 1936.
The researchers discovered the use of Whitworth screw threads in the remains of the building and the nearby south water tower built to power the fountains in front of the Crystal Palace.
They found both a column bolt from the Crystal Palace and a nut and bolt from the water tower had been made to British Standard Whitworth measurements. The finding confirms that the Whitworth thread was being used in a Crystal Palace building 5 decades before being adopted as a British standard in 1905.
“I manufactured new bolts to British Standard Whitworth and demonstrated that they fitted the original nuts,” says lead author Professor John Gardner of Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. Gardner is a Professor of English Literature with an interest in engineering history.
“Standardisation in engineering is essential and commonplace in the 21st century, but its role in the construction of the Crystal Palace was a major development,” he says.
“The Great Exhibition of 1851 was organised to showcase the best of engineering excellence. It was visited by around six million people, which was a third of Britain’s population, and attracted some of the most famous people of the day, including Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday.
“Ironically, Joseph Whitworth was awarded a Council Medal for his displays at the exhibition inside the Crystal Palace, but his important role in the construction of the building itself hasn’t been recognised until now.”
The study appears in the International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology.
