The Eiffel Tower
We all know the Eiffel tower, but do we know its history?
Read here and find some things you don’t know.
It was built for the 100-year celebration of the French Revolution, it was only one of the few things happening at the time. The French
were having a massive festival in Paris, and the Eiffel tower would have been
one of many attractions. In fact it was
supposed to be destroyed after 20 years (Eiffel had that time so he could make
his money back since he funded 80% of the Eiffel tower), but he was able to
point out its usefulness as a radio tower.
It was once used as a billboard and it was the largest
billboard in the world, yep that’s right. It would light up Paris with
thousands of light bulbs spelling the name of the product.
The Eiffel tower was designed by Maurice Koechlin
and Émile Nouguier, two engineers working for the Compagnie des
Établissements Eiffel. Keochlin made a sketch of it and said it
would look like a giant pylon with four legs.
Eiffel originally
didn’t like the idea and it wasn’t until Maurice Koechlin
and Émile Nouguier consulted Stephen Sauvestre (the head of the
engineering section of the company), and that Stephen made some improvements,
that Eiffel liked the idea. Improvements mainly consisted of arches to make it
look more artistic (and structurally stronger).
Lifts
Ground Floor to First Floor
Constructing lifts to
reach the first level was relatively easy, the legs were wide enough at the
bottom and so nearly straight that they could make a straight up and down lift.
The contract was given to the French company Roux, Combaluzier & Lepape for
two lifts to be put in the east and west legs.
First level to second level
It wasn’t until the
second floor that they hit problems, because there was no way for them to get a
straight up and down elevator, in fact no French company wanted the job. Except for the European branch of Otis nobody
else put in a proposal, they had been turned down the first time, but they got accepted when nobody else showed up. Otis was so confident they would get the
job that they had already started making plans for the design.
Second level to third level
The original lifts
for the journey between the second and third levels were supplied by Léon
Edoux. Each car only travelled half the
distance between the second and third levels and people would have to use a
short gangway to change lifts. The 10-ton cars each held 65 passengers.
Opening
The main structure was
completed at the end of March 1889 and, on the 31st of March, Eiffel celebrated by leading a
group of government members, accompanied by the press, to the top of the tower.
Because the lifts
were not yet working, they had to walk up by foot, and took over an hour, with
Eiffel stopping frequently to explain various features.
Most of the party
chose to stop at the lower levels, but a few, including the engineer, Émile
Nouguier, the head of construction, Jean Compagnon, the President of the City
Council, and reporters from Le Figaro and Le Monde Illustré, completed the ascent.
There was still work
to be done (mainly work on the lifts), and the tower was not open until nine
days after the opening of the fair, and even when it did open the lifts had not
been done. People instantly liked the tour with nearly 30,000 visitors making
it to the top before the lifts were finished on 26th of May.
Tickets would cost
you 2 francs for the first level, 3 for the second, and 5 for the top, with
half-price admission on Sundays, and by the end of the exhibition there had
been 1,896,987 visitors.
There are about 6.5 francs
to a euro and 5 to a Canadian dollar.
After dark, the tower
was lit by hundreds of gas lamps, and a beacon made three beams: red, white and
blue light, to make the French flag.
At the top there was
post office where you could send off a post card as a memento, and pieces of
paper you could draw on.
Some quite famous
people came to the Eiffel tower and got to join Eiffel in his personal rooms, including the Prince of Wales, Sarah Bernhardt,
Buffalo Bill
Cody, and Thomas Jefferson.
For the 1900 Exposition Universelle, the lifts in the east and
west legs were replaced by lifts running as far as the second level constructed
by the French firm Fives-Lille. These had a compensating mechanism to keep the
floor level as the angle of ascent changed at the first level, and were driven
by a similar hydraulic mechanism to the Otis lifts, although this was situated
at the base of the tower. At the same
time the lift in the north pillar was removed and replaced by a staircase to
the first level. The layout of both first and second levels was modified, with
the space available for visitors on the second level.
The original lift in
the south pillar was removed 13 years later.
Activities at the Tower
On the 19th
of October 1901, Albert Santos Dumont won a prize for 100,000 francs by flying
from St. Cloud to the Eiffel Tower in less than a half hour. The prize was
offered by Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe.
Many inventions took
play at the Eiffel tower in the early 20th century.
In 1910 Father
Theodor Wulf
measured radiant energy at the top and bottom of the tower. He found
more at the top than expected, accidentally discovering what we known as cosmic rays.
Two years later Franz
Reichelt (an Austrian tailor) died when he tried to demonstrate his design for
a parachute from the first floor of the Eiffel tower (I assume it didn’t work).
In 1914 a radio transmitter
was put on the top and it helped slow down the Germans when they were attacking
, and help an allied victory at the First Battle of the Marne.
In April 1935, the
tower was used to make experimental low-resolution television
transmissions.
A statue of Gustave
Eiffel by Antoine Bourdelle was unveiled at the base of the north leg in
1929.
In 1930, the tower
lost the title of the world's tallest structure when the Chrysler
Building in New York City was completed. But the Eiffel tower became taller again when
they added an antenna to it.
When the Germans were
occupying Paris in 1940, the lift cables were cut
by the French. And they weren’t repaired until 1946.
In 1940, German
soldiers had to climb the tower to hoist a swastika flag, but the
flag was so large it blew away just a few hours later, and was replaced by a
smaller one.
When visiting Paris, Hitler
was too lazy to walk up to the top of the Eiffel tower, so he stayed on the
ground.
When the Allies were nearing Paris in August 1944, Hitler ordered
General Dietrich von Choltitz to demolish the tower along with the
rest of the city. Von Choltitz disobeyed the order (luckily for Paris).
On 25th of
June, before the Germans had been driven out of Paris, the German flag was replaced with a
Tricolour by two men from the French Naval Museum, who narrowly beat three men led by Lucien
Sarniguet, who had lowered the Tricolour on 13th of June 1940 when
Paris fell to the Germans.
A fire started in the
television transmitter on 3rd of January 1956, damaging the top of
the tower. Repairs took a year, and in 1957, the present radio aerial was added
to the top.
According to interviews,
in 1967, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau
negotiated a secret agreement with Charles de
Gaulle for the tower to be dismantled and temporarily relocated to
Montreal to serve as a landmark and tourist attraction during Expo 67.
The plan was allegedly vetoed by the company operating the tower out of fear
that the French government could refuse permission for the tower to be restored
in its original location.
Rooms/restaurants
When originally
built, the first level contained three restaurants, French, Russian, Flemish, and an American Bar. After the exposition closed, the
Flemish restaurant was converted to a 250 seat theatre.
At the top, there
were laboratories for various experiments, and a small apartment reserved for
Gustave Eiffel to entertain guests, which is now open to the public, complete
with period decorations and lifelike mannequins
of Eiffel and some of his notable guests.
In May 2016, an
apartment was created on the first level to accommodate four competition
winners during the UEFA Euro 2016 football tournament in Paris in June. The
apartment has a kitchen, two bedrooms, a lounge, and views of Paris landmarks
including the Seine, the Sacre Coeur, and the Arc de Triomphe.
Structural quirks
Depending on
the temperature, the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to
18 cm due to thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun.
The Eiffel
Tower sways by up to 9 centimetres in the wind.
When it was
built, many were shocked by the tower's daring form. Eiffel was accused of
trying to create something artistic with no regard to the principles of
engineering.
However, Eiffel and his team, were experienced builders and knew what they were doing.
In an
interview with the newspaper Le Temps published on 14 February 1887, Eiffel
said:
“Is it not
true that the very conditions which give strength also conform to the hidden
rules of harmony? … Now to what phenomenon did I have to give primary concern
in designing the Tower? It was wind resistance. Well then! I hold that the
curvature of the monument's four outer edges, which is as mathematical
calculation dictated it should be … will give a great impression of strength
and beauty, for it will reveal to the eyes of the observer the boldness of the
design as a whole.”
When it was put
together every thing had to be precise to 0.1 of a millimeter, and if a piece
was wrong it had to be shipped back to the factory.
Bibliography
http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-eiffel-tower
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower
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