When London’s Crystal Palace was constructed in 1851, it was the world’s largest building. However, the project’s greatest mystery was how the structure was completed in just 190 days.
A new study from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, published in The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, has discovered that the Crystal Palace was the first building known to use a standard screw thread.
The Crystal Palace is the earliest known building to use Whitworth screw threads, later known as British Standard Whitworth (BSW), the first national screw thread standard in the world.
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At the time, the Crystal Palace was a symbol of Britain’s industrial prowess. More than 560 meters (about 1,837 feet) long, the palace had a massive glass roof consisting of 60,000 glass panes made by the Chance Brothers and supported by 3,300 cast iron columns. According to researchers, the roof was so large that it would expand by up to 12 inches on a warm day.
The palace’s design was approved in July 1850, and historians have been puzzled over how it was built in just 39 weeks. The Crystal Palace was a temporary structure constructed initially in Hyde Park in the middle of London. It was dismantled and rebuilt in south London in 1854, where it remained until it burned down in 1936.
Researchers discovered Whitworth screw threads in a column bolt in the building’s remains as well as in a nearby water tower designed to power the Crystal Palace’s fountains. The nut and bolt recovered from the water tower took a little doing to recover; they had to be soaked in oil before being heated and hammered to reveal the matching measurable screw threads.
Until Whitworth invented the threads, no two screws and bolts were alike. Standard measurement didn’t exist, according to the researchers, which made construction very time-consuming, and lost or broken screws and bolts were near impossible to replace. The Crystal Palace had 30,000 nuts and bolts.
Professor John Gardner, who led the study, said the innovation helped change the world. At the time, progress was happening so fast that breakthroughs like this one slipped through the cracks.
The researchers manufactured new bolts to British Standard Whitworth specs, and they fitted the original nuts.
Fun fact: Joseph Whitworth received the Council Medal for his innovations displayed inside the Crystal Palace. However, his role in the building’s construction took nearly two centuries before being recognized.
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