Category:National and international exhibitions

Before World War Two, in a time before the internet (or even colour television), one of the major ways that companies would reach audiences in order to show off their latest and most exciting products was through a rash of national and international exhibitions that flourished between the start of the century and the end of the 1930s. These were a way of modelling the architecture, engineering and culture of a country in miniature, and were designed to boost a nation's profile and encourage exports, as well as providing a place where businesses' representatives could meet, and acting as tourist attractions in their own right. The main funding for the exhibitions was the public ticket sales.

International "Expos"

The template and inspiration for thse exhibitions was Victoria and Albert's The Great Exhibition of 1851, which as seen as a major force for cultural and scientific cross-fertilisation, and spawned a number of imitators, including the 1900 Paris Exhibition at which a young W.J. Bassett-Lowke saw the model railway products of Bing, and made contact with a view to importingthem into the UK market).

The need for coordination between the organisers of these World Fairs (for instance, to avoid different countries trying to hold their own World Fairs at the same time) led to the creation of the Bureau International des Expositions, which has been acting as a central coordinating body for official World Fairs since 1928. Latterly, it has been BIE policy to limit World Fairs to a five-year schedule.

The BIA also authorise a number of more specialised industry-specific or theme-specific Expos, on years between those earked for "proper" Expos.

The 1964 New York World's Fair was a "rogue" expo. Designed to reuse some of the infrastructure that was still in place from the 1939 Expo, the 1964 show was organised unilaterally, without the authorisaiton of the BIE. Although it tried to honor the international traditions of the authorised Expos, its contents ended up being a bit more US-centric.

Additional British expositions

1924 saw the British Empire Exhibition, which was echoed in 1938 in the form of the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow. The later 1938 exhobition was less of a success, partly due to Glasgow being less of a population centre than London, and partly due to the impending Second World War, which limited the amount of effort that the authorities were prepared to put into supporting a second-year "run" for the Exhibition in 1939.

Post-war, the British government had a major push to try to raise national morale with the Festival of Britain (1951), which was held on the hundredth anniversary of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

In 2000, the government attempted to recapture some of this excitement with The Millennium Experience (2000), which was widely perceived as a poorly-planned flop, and something of a national embarrassment ... with the exception of the construction of the Millenium Dome, a supposedly temporary structure that (as of 2022) is still in use.

Yearly UK exhibitions

Among the UK's other yearly shows, the Ideal Home Exhibition (now the Ideal Home Show) has been running since 1908, and its past catalogues make for a fascinating record of cultural changes.

Specifically for toys and models, the British Industries Fair (BIF) was unoficially "adopted" by the British toy industry as a place to launch new products and ranges (followed by the Brighton Toy Fair and the London Toy Fair). The yearly Model World show is unfortunately no longer going,but the Model Engineer Exhibition ("MEE"), still seems to be going strong.

Bassett-Lowke Exhibition Models

The early Twentieth Century enthusiasm for using exhibitions as a major commercial communications medium was good news for Bassett-Lowke Ltd. and other model-making companies, whose network of modelmakers fluent in using a range of materials meant that they were ideally placed to capitalise on companies' desires to have something that they could put on show. While companies that produced cars or home furnishings could easily show off their actual products (contributing to the success of the Ideal Home Exhibition), railway companies couldn't easily show off their latest locomotives, shipping companies couldn't show off their new ships, and architectural projects couldn't show off their buildings for real – this is where Bassett-Lowke in particular could offer a "one-stop" service to produce almost any type of exhibition model, often through their specialist offshoot Twining Models..

External links

• Bureau International des Expositions (bie-paris.org)