Digital Civilization

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

Published in weekly parts Apr 1854 - Aug 1854

Hard Times -  Published in weekly parts Apr 1854 - Aug 1854

Dismissed initially as "sullen socialism", the novel gained new life with F.R. Leavis' positive critical treatment in The Great Tradition (1948). Leavis considered Hard Times Dickens' "masterpiece" and "his only serious work of art". Since then it has been one of Dickens' best-sellers, widely taught in schools

Many of the Triangle factory workers were women, some as young as 15 years old. They were, for the most part, recent Italian and European Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States with their families to seek a better life. Instead, they faced lives of grinding poverty and horrifying working conditions.

Even today, sweatshops have not disappeared in the United States. They keep attracting workers in desperate need of employment and illegal immigrants, who may be anxious to avoid involvement with governmental agencies. Recent studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor found that 67% of Los Angeles garment factories and 63% of New York garment factories violate minimum wage and overtime laws. Ninety-eight percent of Los Angeles garment factories have workplace health and safety problems serious enough to lead to severe injuries or death.

Floor area of 770,000 sq ft.,1851 ft long, 450 ft wide.

Over 13,000 exhibits were displayed and viewed by over 6,200,000 visitors to the exhibition.

The London Borough of Bromley, who own the park today, together with the Crystal Palace Foundation, have recently submitted an outline proposal the National Heritage Lottery Fund to restore much of the park to its former glory.

The Crystal Palace itself was destroyed by fire on  November 30th 1936, following which the area lost much of its focus and began to decline. But many of the most important events in the history of the Crystal Palace took place in the grounds, which retain much of their original overall layout today and are a Grade II listed historic park.