Victorian Inventions & Technology

When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, the Industrial Revolution was well underway. Great canals already made it possible to transport goods across country to ports like Liverpool, so that British produce could be exported all over the world. Steam engines and steamboats were revolutionising transport, and the telegraph and Morse code were beginning to change the way the world communicated. Photography was also being introduced.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 held at the Crystal Palace in London was intended to show off the great technological achievements of the British Empire. Although at first the Government was not very interested in holding such an exhibition, Queen Victoria's husband, Albert, pushed the idea forward. In the end, over 6 million visitors came to the exhibition and it was a great success. The money raised by the Exhibition was used to found the Royal Albert Hall, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Crystal Palace itself was especially designed for the Great Exhibition and was a huge iron structure with over a million feet of glass. Inside were over 13,000 exhibits from all over the world, including all kinds of new inventions, plus trees, fountains and even a circus.

See more pictures of the Crystal Palace here.

So what other things were invented during the reign of Queen Victoria?

1843 - The Typewriter
1846 - The Sewing Machine
1849 - Reinforced Concrete
1853 - first parts of the London Underground built
1854 - Steel Converter
1858 - First Transatlantic telegraph cable laid
1867 - Dynamite
1876 - the Telephone
1877 - the Phonograph
1883 - first skyscraper
1885 - first car to use internal combustion engine
1895 - Cinematograph
1899 - Aspirin
1901 - first trans-Atlantic radio message sent