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Hello, quote, its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things.

Whatever human industry has created, you find there. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this massive wealth from all the ends of the earth.

So wrote Charlotte Bronte in 1851 after visiting the great exhibition set in the vast Crystal Palace in London's Hyde Park.

By the time the exhibition closed, one quarter of the entire British population had visited Crystal Palace, the first prefabricated building of its kind,

to marvel at an extraordinary array of exhibits amongst which were the biggest diamond in the world, a lighthouse, a huge microscope, a carriage drawn by kites, furniture made of coal,

and a set of artificial teeth fitted with a swivel device which allowed the user to yawn without displacing them.

Its impact was great in terms of the growth of British manufacturing, the burgeoning of a global consumer market, the development of museums, and the international standing of Britain, culturally and technologically.

So how did the exhibition, as it were, crystallize a particular moment in early Victorian Britain?

In what way did it capitalize on the dawn of mass travel and greater levels of international cooperation? And what ideas drove it?

With me to discuss the Great Exhibition at Jeremy Black, Professor of History at the University of Exeter, Hermione Hobbes, Architectural Historian and Writer, and Clive Amesley, Professor of History at the Open University.

Jeremy Black, what do you think the Great Exhibition was an expression of?

I think it was an expression of the age of utilitarianism, the idea that human effort ought to be organised for the improvement of mankind.

And I think both visually and in terms of the contents of the exhibition, it very much fulfilled that purpose.

What did it discuss in terms of the ideas behind it at the time?

Very much so. There was a large debate about the direction in which Britain ought to be going.

There was tension about how far it ought to embrace the ideas of industrialisation, was industrialisation in other words, something that was unfortunate, something that we had to have in order to finance the existing system.

Or how far should there be, as it were, an embrace of modernity, modernity understood in terms of the public use of the industrial profit that was coming through?

And where did this discussion take place, which is in the magazines, are we talking about coffee houses?

Where would we look to find evidence of this discussion about Britain's place in the world and future in the world?

You could see it in terms of magazines and newspapers, you could see it in terms of Parliament.

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