7. A System to Force down the General Throat

Abstract

This chapter begins with the opening of the Great Exhibition on 1 May 1851, which attracted six million visitors, a tenth of the entire population of Great Britain. It recounts how Henry Cole managed to make himself indispensable to the Great Exhibition's organisation, in which he accumulated responsibilities that allowed him to gradually reassert control. It also mentions utilitarian reformers who came to exercise an extraordinary influence over the Royal Society of Arts and promoted the development of enlarged generalisations and comprehensive measures. The chapter discusses how Cole and his allies reformed the entire system on protecting intellectual property in order to look after the creations of inventors and manufacturers. It points out that the campaign for patent reform was one of the Society's most successful lobbying efforts ever.