ABSTRACT
W. L. Burn's The Age of Equipoise emphasizes a series of disciplines and network of authorities which preserved the sense of order within England between 1852 and 1867. Exhibition officials and others promoting machinery turned to the shows to naturalize their vision of an industrial equipoise. The Bee-Hive's banner headline declared the 1862 International Exhibition a 'FAILURE', in good part because of the commissioners' 'jobbery and robbery', which lined their elite pockets at the expense of the nation. Those were sustained and systematic voices of dissent during exhibitions, rather than momentary bursts of public outcry about ephemeral fears, such as possible visitation of the Plague in 1851. Representations of the market as an idea and process were at the heart of the exhibitions, reminding contemporaries of the market's power, promises and failures. Charles Babbage claimed at the time of the Great Exhibition that direct observation of craftsmen and contact between consumers and producers 'removed the veil of mystery' about economic transactions.
