Under the influence of the particular liberal currents of the time, Prince Albert made a bold decision: he would build a wonder!
His thinking was that Britain's economy was in a severe downturn. Factories were closing and workers were losing their jobs, which led to agricultural products going unsold and farmers' incomes falling.
The British people needed their spirits lifted, and a vast, magnificent wonder was exactly what they needed.
In fact, Prince Albert's plan was something of a combination of using public works to provide relief and stimulating domestic demand.
It was exactly what Britain needed at the time. If events followed the same course as in history, the British would once again astonish the world at the first Great Exhibition in 1851.
But Franz had already left this timeline full of holes, and the same choice could very well lead to a different—or even completely opposite—outcome.
To realize his grand vision, Prince Albert began soliciting designs from the public. One unusual proposal caught his eye.
It was the Crystal Palace, designed by the renowned architect Joseph Paxton. Even Joseph Paxton himself had no idea that the materials they would use to build the Crystal Palace would come from Austria.
The industrial revolution in the glass industry, which should have taken place in Britain in the course of history, never happened. Franz had beaten the British to it, bringing the glass industry's revolution to Bohemia.
The transformation of glassmaking was really a process of building momentum, like a snowball rolling downhill. Large-scale glass production could not simply be stopped; restarting it after a shutdown would come at enormous cost, much like steelmaking in a blast furnace.
The larger the scale, the lower the costs. Conversely, the smaller the scale and the longer the gap, the higher the costs.
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