Then, as now (as ever shall be) a shop in Belgravia needed a fancy, filigreed, highfalutin name. So the Seth Smith brothers who had built it called it The Pantechnicon, which is Greek for Pertaining To All Of The Crafts, or Universally Crafty.
The shop did not do well. After a while they converted it into a storage place for people who had nowhere to put their furniture. All over Victorian London the great horse-drawn wagons would trundle, taking beds, divans, sofas and seats to and from the Pantechnicon. As with modern moving vans they had the name of the company- Pantechnicon - painted on the side.
The furniture storage business did very well until February 1874 when the Pantechnicon burnt to the ground. However, it had been around for long enough for the vast removal wagons to become universally known as pantechnicons. They were massive, twelve foot long and seven foot wide.
Nothing is left of the Pantechnicon today but the facade, and a nearby pub of the same name. But it still survives in the language as the name for a large vehicle that is just outside my window.
Not if you're American, though. I don't think Americans call them pantechnicons.
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