The Crystal Palace pane of glass (49 inches) as the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle, thereby creating a triangle with a length-to-height ratio of 2.5:1, whose base (adjacent side) was 4 feet long. By mirroring this triangle he obtained the 8-foot-wide gables that formed the vertical faces at either end of the prism, each of which was 24' long. With this arrangement, Paxton could glaze the entire roof surface with identical panes that did not need to be trimmed. Paxton placed three of these 8' x 24' roof units side-by-side, horizontally supported by a grid of cast iron beams, which was held up
Heronian triangle triangles with these sidelengths, and joins them together along the sides of length "a", to obtain a triangle with integer side lengths "c", "e", and "b" + "d", and with area If "a" is even then the area "A" is an integer. Less obviously, if "a" is odd then "A" is still an integer, as "b" and "d" must both be even, making "b"+"d" even too. Some Heronian triangles cannot be obtained by joining together two right-angled triangles with integer sides as described above. For example, a 5, 29, 30 Heronian triangle with area 72 cannot be constructed from two