IN the spring of 1904 the British Empire was at its zenith, and the future for trade looked rosy.

It was, Bradford decided, time to celebrate. And if, during the celebrations, there was the chance of making a few contacts or a few bob, so much the better.

Trade was what the city's prosperity was based on a shop window wouldn't be a bad idea. So it was that the seeds for the Bradford Exhibition were sown.

At the centre of the beanfeast was the opening, on Wednesday, May 4, of the new city art gallery at Cartwright Memorial Hall. It had been the gift of Lord Masham, formerly Samuel Cunliffe Lister, the man behind the huge Manningham Mills complex, who named the new hall after Edmund Cartwright, developer of the power loom and the woolcombing machine.

What was needed was a big guest to do the opening, and the Prince of Wales was the obvious choice. The grandson of Queen Victoria, who had died three years earlier, he was regarded as a dutiful man who appeared to embrace family values of thrift and domesticity. He became King George V, the current Queen's grandfather.

It was decided that, while he was in Bradford, he could also unveil the statue of his late grandmother at the bottom of Morley Street in Bradford.

To pull the whole thing together, there would be a great exhibition in Lister Park, home of the new gallery, "for the interest, education and edification of the public". It would last from May to October and would, by the standards of the day, be pretty spectacular.

The budget was also an issue. The exhibition was housed in an industrial hall actually bigger than Cartwright Hall, and a concert hall about the same size, but impressive as they looked, gleaming white against the park lake, they were temporary buildings which would vanish when their purpose was served, keeping the cost down.

A new bridge appeared over the lake and alongside it was a water chute for those with daredevil leanings. The exhibition also boasted a Crystal Maze - what we'd know as a hall of mirrors.

The outside world wasn't ignored. Russia and Japan, who had recently fought a naval action at Port Arthur, where the Russian fleet was anchored. With the exhibition barely a couple of weeks old, the Russian Baltic Fleet, which had staggered around the world to take revenge on Japan, was destroyed by Admiral Togo's warships in the Straits of Tsushima - a historic battle which provided the plot for countless replays on Lister Park lake between miniature battleships.

Other features included a gravity railway and a weekly firework display, while gas lights, new-fangled electric lights and Chinese lanterns turned the park into a fairyland, said the organisers.

There was even a 'village' of about 100 people from Somalia in the Horn of Africa. They had been touring Europe, demonstrating such skills as wrestling and spear-throwing, and while in Lister Park they established a rapport with locals. During their stay, the first Yorkshire-born Somali child made her appearance.

Bradfordians flocked to the great exhibition. In the first week, 78,651 people paid the entrance fee. By the end, nearly 2.5 million had passed through the gates.

A souvenir brochure printed five weeks after the opening said: "The City of Bradford Exhibition, which was opened on May 4th, 1904, under fortunate auspices, by Their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales, has made its mark unmistakably as an undertaking of very considerable interest to the people of the United Kingdom."

It refers to the exhibition as "an industrial display; an important collection of pictures on loan, for the reason that the Cartwright Memorial Hall is to be permanently a Temple of Art; music of the best order, to be in keeping with the generally high standard of the Exhibition; and shows of various attractive kinds for the masses of people who will seek within the boundaries of the Exhibition opportunities of amusement."

Now a commemorative tin and postcards marking the 1904 exhibition have been offered to the city's museums service. The historic items have been stored at Bankfield Museum in Halifax but, with no relevance to Calderdale, were thought to be no longer required.

Calderdale councillors have agreed, following consultation with its museums collections advisory group, that the tin can be given to Bradford Museums for its collection.