That culminated in the design of the Crystal Palace using a similar idea, built for the Great exhibition of 1851, for which he was knighted. His design, originally on a bit of blotting paper, only took him nine days to complete. The building itself was erected in just six months, with 293,655 panes of glass, 330 huge iron columns and 24 miles of gutters. To his advantage was the earlier repeal of the Victorian glass tax in 1838 had led to the price of glass dropping by 80% !

The Lucys: Mary Elizabeth, Spencer and Berkeley visited Crystal Palace on July 3rd 1851. She reported in her memoirs, now published in The Mistress of Charlecote by Alice Fairfax Lucy, that the total number of visitors had been 6,200,000 (then equivalent to one third of the population) She also claimed that the total takings amounted to £500,000 although Wikipedia says the surplus was only £181,000 equivalent today to over £18 million. It was sufficient to create the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Science Museum and the Natural History Museum.