There was a printing machine that could turn out 5,000 copies of the popular periodical the Illustrated London News in an hour, and another for printing and folding envelopes, a machine for making the new-fangled cigarettes, and an expanding hearse. There were folding pianos convenient for yachtsmen, and others so laden with curlicues that the keyboard was almost overwhelmed. There was a useful pulpit connected to pews by rubber tubes so that the deaf could hear, and ‘tangible ink’ for the blind, producing raised characters on paper. A whole gallery was devoted to those elegant, sophisticated carriages that predated the motorcar, and if you looked carefully you could find one or two velocipedes, the early version of bicycles. There were printing presses and textile machines and agricultural machines. There were examples of every kind of steam engine, including the giant railway locomotives…In short, as the Queen put it in her Diary, ‘every conceivable invention’.