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1872 Moscow
| Name: | Polytechnic Exhibition |
| Dates: | 30 May – 16 Oct 1872 |
| Days: | |
| Venue: | 86 pavilions stretched along the walls of the Kremlin – in the Alexander Garden on the banks of the Moska River, and also witin the Kremlin |
| Theme: | Advances in areas such as technology, warfare, science and culture. |
| Exhibitors: | 10,000 exhibitors from all Russian provinces and about 2, 000 foreign exhibitors from Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Britain, Germany and other countries |
| Awards: | |
| Visitors: | 750,000 -On the opening day the price of a ticket was 5 roubles, on following days the price was lowered to 1 rouble, and in the last month it went down to 20 kopecks. |
| Legacy: | Many of the exhibits formed the initial collection of the Central Polytechnic Museum |
This event challenged the previous orthodoxy and instead of having one central building it had separate buildings for each category – a similar approach to the 1871-4 London International Exhibitions.
the boat arriving is the ‘Peter the Great’
The organiser was the Society of Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography. of the Imperial University of Moscow. It was also used to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of Peter the Great.
The exhibits did not include Fine Arts because one of its intentions was to gather together suitable exhibits for the Central Polytechnic Museum. Exhibition halls were illuminated by gas, from a specially built gas plant. The event held numerous scientific and technical readings, debates, lectures, public educational courses…
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At the far end of the pictured room above (left) there is a large painting of the Good Samaritan with three marble busts. A Russian coat of arms and four flags hang above it. To either side of the pavilion there are display cabinets and plants, the walls and ceiling are made of fabric.
The exhibition had its own printing press, which issued a daily Herald of the Moscow Polytechnic Exhibition, and a weekly magazine Bell and other printed materials.
The main categories were Geologo-Mineralogical, Mining, Technological and Applied Physics, Arboricultral, Botanical and Horticultural.
A turnstile at the entrance connected to the device to account for the number of visitors – it recorded a rather suspiciously round-number of 750,000 entries.
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