The Eiffel Tower Essay, Research Paper

The Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel tower is the trademark of Paris, France. With the tower being 984ft, it s kind of hard not to notice it. The tower has a restaurant, radio and television transmitter and more. Gustave A. Eiffel created the tower to enter it in the worlds fair. It was made with wrought iron and had medium wind resistance. Gustave started in 1889 and completed in 1910.

Gustave A. Eiffel created the Eiffel Tower. Eiffel oversaw the construction with such success that in 1866 he founded his own company and soon became known for his wrought iron structures. Starting in 1872 he attracted foreign contracts, and in 1877 he created over the Douro River in Porto, Portugal, a steel arch bridge 525 ft in height.

The Eiffel Tower is a landmark and an early example of wrought-iron construction on a gigantic scale. It was designed and built by the French civil engineer Gustave Alexandre Eiffel for the Paris World’s Fair of 1889. The tower, without its modern broadcasting antennae, is 984 ft high. The lower section consists of four immense arched legs set on masonry piers. The legs curve inward until they unite in a single tapered tower. Platforms, each with an observation deck, are at three levels; on the first is also a restaurant. The tower, constructed of about 7000 tons of iron, has stairs and elevators. A meteorological station, a radio communications station, and a television transmission antenna, as well as a suite of rooms that were used by Eiffel are located near the top of the tower.

Eiffel’s work combined expert craftsmanship and graceful design. Completed in 1884, it was for a time the highest bridge in the world, winning Eiffel’s factory a worldwide reputation for excellence. Eiffel cast Frederic Auguste Bartholdi’s colossal statue Liberty Enlightening the World, which was dedicated in New York in 1886. Soon after, he began work on his greatest project, the building of the Eiffel Tower. It was completed in 1889 for the celebration of the centennial of the French Revolution (1789-1799). Eiffel was not a popular man when he started building the huge steel-frame tower that would overlook Paris. The structure was just too different and the critics didn’t like it at all. In 1887, the leading artists of Paris signed a petition to have what they regarded as a monstrosity torn down immediately. Fortunately for Paris, their call was ignored. And though Parisians didn’t like it at first, they began to grow fond of the structure they initially called a Cyclops and a skeleton. The Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889, just in time to show off for the World’s Fair, being held that year in Paris. The tower was also a sign of things to come. Eiffel was taking full advantage of a new building material, structural steel. With it he took the first step in creating what would become the modern skyscraper.

The imposing tower-constructed of 7,000 tons of iron in 18,000 parts held together by 2,500,000 rivets rises to a height of 984 ft and continues to dominate the Paris skyline. In the early 1890 s Eiffel gave up the daily management of his business and became absorbed in the new science of aerodynamics.

Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin, the two chief engineers in Eiffel’s company, had the idea for a very tall tower in June 1884. It was to be designed like a large pylon with four columns of lattice work girders, separated at the base and coming together at the top, and joined to each other by more metal girders at regular intervals. The company had by this time mastered perfectly the principle of building bridge supports. The tower project was a bold extension of this principle up to a height of 300 meters, equivalent to the symbolic figure of 1000 ft. On September 18 1884 Eiffel registered a patent “for a new figuration allowing the construction of metal supports and pylons capable of exceeding a height of 300 meters”.

Eiffel s clockwork precision had enabled him not only to meet his deadline, but to build the structure with the loss of only one life, that of a worker who fell from the first platform while apparently showing off for his girlfriend after the bell had sounded ending the working day.

The Eiffel tower is the trademark for Paris. Even though The people of Paris didn t like the tower, they got to like it, so did the tourist. Then they found out about the good transmitting with the radio and the television. Now the Eiffel tower is a major tourist attraction, and one of the best standing structures in the world.