The following stories highlight many interesting facts about the Eiffel Tower that you may not be familiar with. We hope that you enjoy reading them!

 The Eiffel Tower Factbook
 The Construction of The Eiffel Tower
 The Constroversy about The Eiffel Tower
 The Untold History of The Eiffel Tower
 Gustave Eiffel: The Man Behind The Mastepiece

The Eiffel Tower Factbook
by Karen Plumley

Date opened to public: May 15, 1889, during Universal Exposition celebrating 100 th anniversary of the French Revolution.

Owners: The City of Paris.

Height: 324 meters (with antenna). First Floor: 57.63m. Second Floor: 115.75m. Third Floor: 276.13m.

Weight: Metal framework weight: 7,300 tons. Total weight: 10,000 tons.

Dimensions of Base: 125m square.

Number of steps to the top: 1,665 from the ground to the top (however, steps from the second floor to the top are closed to the public).

Movement: Wind force causes the top of the tower to sway 6 – 7 centimeters.

Visibility on a clear day: 67 kilometers (42 miles).

Tallest Structure in the World: 1889-1930 (until Chrysler Building ).

2nd Tallest Structure in the World: 1930-1932 (Until Empire State Bldg).

Number of names of French scientists written on the sides of the tower: 72.

Construction: 1887 – 1889 (Two years, two months and two days).

Rivets: 2,500,000.

Steel pieces: 18,038.

Number of steel workers: 300.

Number of workers killed during construction: 1 (He was showing off for his girlfriend at the end of the day).

Cost to build: 7,800,000 gold francs (in 1889).

Contractor: Gustave Eiffel.

Engineers: Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier.

Architect: Stephen Sauvestre.

Workmen: 50 engineers 100 ironworkers. 121 workers at construction site.

Number of visitors since opening: 204,381,152 by the end of 2002.

Electricity: 7,500,000 kilowatt hours per year.

Water: 65,000 m³ per year.

Elevators: Approximately 100,000 kilometers traveled per year.

Paint: Repainted every 5 years, requiring 50 tons of paint.

First radio transmission: 1918.

First TV transmission: 1957.

Illumination:

1889: During the evening of the tower's inauguration, 10,000 gas street lamps adorned the steeple and platforms. Two projectors on the tower top illuminated the other Parisian monuments below. The blue, white and red beacon lights were considered the most powerful in the world.

1900: Electricity arrives at the Eiffel Tower, as 3,200 lamps spotlight its framework and decorative arches.

1925-1936: André Citroën adds the first decorative lighting display to the tower. As an ad campaign, the name Citroën is sculpted from 250,000 colored lamps, which adorns three sides of the tower and is visible 30 kilometers away.

1985, New Year's Eve: Inauguration of a new lighting system, the final phase of a comprehensive restoration program, initiated by the city of Paris in 1980. The gold-toned, twinkling lighting system comprises 352 sodium lamps mounted on the inside of the tower.

2000, New Year's Day: The Eiffel Tower is adorned in festive lighting composed of 20,000 spots and a beacon projector on the tower top.

2001, New Year's Day: For the New Year, blue filters are placed over the lamps, allowing the sparkling lights to take on blue sapphire tones.

2001, July 14: The glittering light system is dismantled.

2003, June 21: The Eiffel Tower is once again covered in diamond-sparkling lights that are displayed for five minutes, every hour on the hour, from dusk until 2 a.m. (1 a.m. in winter).

The two light beams at the top of the tower can be seen up to 80km away. The beacon is composed of four marine-type, motorized projectors, operated by automatically piloted computer programs. Their rotation sweep is 90°, so they are synchronized to form a double beam in a cross that pivots around 360°. The 6,000-watt lamps, which last for approximately 1200 hours, are cooled to prevent overheating and also heated when the temperatures drop below zero centigrade and the lights are off.

Miscellaneous Facts:

Scam: In 1925, con artist Victor Lustig sells the Eiffel Tower for scrap.

Tallest title lost: In 1929, the Tower loses the title of the world's tallest structure when the Chrysler Building is completed in New York.

Bomb: In 1986, during a period when Paris was suffering a wave of terrorist activity, a janitor discovers a bomb at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Fortunately the bomb is defused — as it was powerful enough to have blown off the whole top of the tower.

Strike: In 1996, the Eiffel Tower is closed for five days when workers go on strike demanding staff parking facilities and a shorter workweek. The strike is thought to have cost the tower more than $500,000.

Mata Hari: During WWI, the tower's radiotelegraphic center is used to intercept enemy messages, one of which led to the arrest and execution of the infamous Danish dancer and spy, Mata Hari.

Hitler: When Hitler visits occupied Paris in 1940, the lift cables of the tower are cut by the French so he would have to climb the 1,792 steps to the summit. The part needed to repair them was allegedly impossible to obtain because of the war, though it was working again within hours of the departure of the Nazis. Hitler chose to stay on the ground.

Source: Official Eiffel Tower Website at www.tour-eiffel.fr.

The Construction of The Eiffel Tower
by Karen Plumley

The Competition

Had it not been M. Gustave Eiffel who won the $800 first-place prize in the design competition for 1889's Exposition Universelle, the Paris skyline would look very different today.

On May 2, 1886, the Centennial Exposition Committee invited French architects and engineers to submit building designs for the upcoming World Fair in Paris, which was to commemorate the 100 th anniversary of the French Revolution. Despite a short deadline, more than 100 proposals poured in—ranging from the banal to the bizarre.

One design resembled a massive guillotine, which the committee felt was taking the French Revolution theme a little too far. Another entrant favored utility over grandiosity, suggesting a tower shaped like a giant water sprinkler, which could be used to water Paris in case of a drought. Yet another entry proposed a monumental, 1,000-foot granite lighthouse, which, the designers claimed, would be so powerful that people in even the most remote sections of Paris would receive enough light to read a newspaper at night.

Fortunately for millions of future tourists, many of the contending designs were deemed unworkable or insufficiently researched, and M. Eiffel made a compelling case for his 300-meter iron tower. Civilizations had been building with stone for centuries, Eiffel argued, and the only way to truly symbolize France 's significant technological and economic progress was with a new material: metal. In describing his vision, Eiffel said that only metal could make the tower “seem to spring out of the ground and somehow be molded by the action of the wind itself.” He also stressed his tower's usefulness in such areas as meteorology and optical telegraphy; its certain popular success and relatively modest cost; and finally, the certainty that his tower could realistically be constructed.

But when the exposition committee finally declared the Eiffel Tower to be the winning design, there were plenty of skeptics who questioned whether what Eiffel proposed on paper could actually be made a reality. After all, the tallest tower in the world at the time was the Washington Monument at 555 feet, and it had taken (including an interruption for the Civil War) more than 36 years to construct. Eiffel's colossal 1,000-foot tower would dwarf the American obelisk—and he had less than two years to finish the project.

Although confident that his tower would be successful, Eiffel would have been justified in harboring some momentary doubts. The contract awarded him by the committee stated that Eiffel himself, not his company, was solely responsible for the entire tower project, including its construction, financing and maintenance during the exhibition. In return for his work, Eiffel would receive the sum of 1.5 million francs, as well as all income derived from the commercial use of the tower for a period of 20 years following the close of the exhibition.

The grant of 1.5 million francs would not begin to cover the cost of completing the project, which was estimated at 6 million francs. Nonetheless, Eiffel accepted the risky terms of the agreement, and on January 1, 1887 —despite continuous growling from the naysayers—he took possession of the designated site on the Champ de Mars and prepared to build his tower.

The Preparations

Eiffel's design specified a 300-meter, 7,000-ton wrought-iron tower, with a base measuring 125 square meters. There would be a 4,200-square-meter glass-paneled gallery on the first level; a 900-square-meter gallery on the second level; and a 250-square-meter glass-paneled dome on the third level, with a balcony offering a spectacular view from the Bois de Boulogne to Vincennes.

An expert on the characteristics of various metals by this point in his career, Eiffel had decided that wrought iron was the only available material that would provide the necessary combination of strength, flexibility, durability and affordability to make his design a reality.

The main issue Eiffel had wrestled with in his design was how to protect the tower from the wind, as the lattice beams he was accustomed to using on the bridges he constructed would not work here. Instead, Eiffel designed the tower with a series of lattice-trussed piers with incurving edges, with the curvature of the uprights mathematically determined to provide the most efficient wind resistance possible. His design proved to be engineering genius as the tower has never swayed more that 9 centimeters in even the strongest winds, and many of today's skyscrapers are constructed in much the same way.

First put to paper back in 1884, the tower design had been revised many times, with Eiffel carefully calculating each aspect to insure that every beam, bolt and hole would be as precise as possible. However, the location the committee had selected for his project introduced a whole new set of challenges.

When Eiffel ordered soil samples from the site on which he was to build, he discovered that the land to the south and east of the spot was firm and suitable for his purpose, while the land to the north and west consisted of soft, mucky soil that was less than an ideal base for the foundations of the massive tower. Additionally, this area was close to the Seine and faced the constant threat of flooding.

Eiffel decided the only solution was to use two different systems to set the tower's foundation piers—a dry foundation system for the south and east and a compressed air system for the area closest to the Seine. And by digging the riverside foundations sixteen feet deeper than those on the dry side, Eiffel calculated that the piers would be stable enough to support the weight of the massive structure.

At last the time for committees and calculations had come to an end, and construction of Eiffel's magnum opus could begin.

The Construction

Considering the magnitude of the tower project, Eiffel's work crew was quite small, never exceeding 250 at any one time. More than 5,000 mechanical drawings depicting 18,038 different parts of the tower had been created before the first beam was lifted in order to eliminate all guess work during the actual construction. Due to this extraordinarily detailed planning, Eiffel was able to set new standards for accuracy in design and speed of construction with only a modest work force.

But for all of Eiffel's careful planning and concern for safety, the men still faced challenging work conditions. In addition to working on what was to be the tallest structure in the world, the crew was also required to adjust to new equipment and technology, much of which had never been used before.

The construction process was infused with Eiffel's exceptional innovation from the very beginning. To install the riverside foundations, Eiffel used injected compressed air and watertight, metal caissons, which are generally used in underwater construction. The workers could climb down into a caisson, which was like an underground room, and work below the level of the Seine, using pickaxes to break up the soil that the caisson itself had loosened. As they removed the soil, the 34-ton caissons would sink deeper and break up more soil and rocks for the workers to remove.

Once the digging was complete, the workmen poured 20 feet of quick-drying cement into each hole to provide a base for the foundation piers. The cement was topped with massive blocks of limestone, which were then capped by two layers of cut stone from the Château Landon quarry. The same quarry had provided stone for two other well-known Parisian monuments — the Arc de Triomphe and Sacré Coeur.

For further stability, an iron base called a shoe was bolted to each stone. Here Eiffel added another innovative touch to his design, placing a piston in the hollow of each shoe, which could be moved by water released under pressure. The pistons, acting as hydraulic jacks, could raise or lower each of the sixteen caissons under the foundation piers, ensuring that the tower would be in perfect alignment.

By the end of June 1887, the tower's foundation was complete, and curious spectators would finally watch the tower start to take shape. In order to ensure that every hole and rivet was in exactly the right spot, Eiffel's construction plan called for each element of the tower to be formed separately at his factory in Levallois-Perret. Each of the more than 18,000 parts used to build the tower was traced out to an accuracy of a tenth of a millimeter and then assembled in pieces measuring about five meters each and weighing no more than three tons.

Every day, the finished iron pieces arrived at the building site by horse-drawn wagons from the shop on the outskirts of Paris. Thanks to Eiffel's precise system, there was never any need for last minute checking; once on site, the pieces were simply lifted into position by steam-powered cranes.

As the tower gradually began to rise, Eiffel implemented yet another innovation, without which the project would probably not have been completed. Creeper cranes were installed on the sloping tracks inside the piers with arms that could lift construction material from the ground to the tower's higher platforms. The machines could pivot 360 degrees and could move up the tracks as the work progressed. Without the creeper cranes, it would have been almost impossible to hoist the necessary material to the top of the giant tower.

Slowly the tower grew, reaching 92 feet by October 10, 1887, and 380 feet by July 14, 1888, when the tower was the scene of many festivities in honor of Bastille Day. But work quickly resumed, as there now remained only eight short months until the opening day of the World Fair.

Now, throughout the hot summer months, the workers would have to put in twelve-hour days to finish the tower on schedule. Nothing escaped Eiffel's attention in his determination to ensure speed and efficiency; when he realized that the workers' lunch hours were wasting valuable time because it now took so long to climb down and back up the soaring tower, he had a canteen built on the first level of the tower.

As construction neared the top of the tower, Eiffel had to adjust his building methods once again. A steam-powered winch would lift materials placed in its hooks and ropes from the ground to the first level. From there, a second winch would transport the material to a third winch, installed on a platform 650 feet above the ground, which then passed the pieces to the creeper cranes. Visitors would watch in amazement as the entire process of lifting material from the ground to the highest elevation took only 20 minutes.

The final critical element of the construction process was the installation of the elevator system, which was the only job that Eiffel had to subcontract. Because the powerful hydraulic technology he insisted on using was less than a decade old, and because he had relatively little control over the project, Eiffel was more nervous about this aspect of the construction than any other. Yet it seemed a necessary evil, as Eiffel realized it was unlikely many visitors would be willing to climb 1,665 steps to reach the top of the tower.

The addition of elevators was further complicated by the inclination of the tower's legs, which meant the elevator cars would have to travel on curved tracks aligned at different angles. The elevators would also have to carry a large number of people and be in continuous use, so Eiffel would accept nothing less than the best technology of the time. In the end, Eiffel hired three different companies — two French and one American — to accomplish the task.

After months of arduous labor and uncertainty, the tower was finally near completion. By early 1889, all that remained were a few finishing touches to prepare for the thousands of visitors expected at the exposition.

On the third floor balcony, two powerful spotlights were mounted and positioned to illuminate different monuments around Paris. At the very top of the tower was an electric beacon with a range of nearly 120 miles. The beacon was enclosed in a cylinder of red, white and blue prisms, the French national colors, and was timed to flash every ninety seconds. Finally, the tower was painted in Barbados bronze, a reddish brown color, which was applied in progressively lighter shades from bottom to top in the hopes of making the tower look even taller.

And then it was over. Through criticism and ridicule, one fatality, a workers strike and even a lawsuit, Eiffel had seen his dream through to reality. He had not only made his deadline, but he'd finished the project with a final price tag 6 percent under the $1.6 million he had estimated.

On May 15, 1889, the Eiffel Tower was finally opened to the public. During the six months the exposition ran, nearly two million people came to explore and admire Eiffel's engineering triumph. The only area to which visitors were denied access was a little spiral staircase rising from the third floor of the tower to M. Eiffel's private apartment. Modest rooms for such a celebrated gentleman, but they allowed the artist to live in his masterpiece.

The Controversy about The Eiffel Tower
by Karen Plumley

“…Imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack….”

It's hard to believe that these words were once used to describe what today is considered to be the world's best-known monument—an icon that brings historic, exotic Paris to life in the minds of people everywhere. But in a letter published in the newspaper Le Temps in 1887, the gigantic black smokestack in question was indeed the Eiffel Tower.

Protest and controversy surrounded Gustave Eiffel's tower from the moment the creator proposed his ambitious project. Certainly at the time of its construction, the Eiffel Tower seemed incongruous in a city adorned with some of the world's finest, stone architecture. But the tower was being built for the 1889 World Fair, intended to showcase the significant progress France had made in engineering and technology in the 100 years since the French Revolution. For an event dubbed the “Universal Exposition of the Products of Industry,” the exhibition committee had considered the edgy, iron monument to be entirely appropriate.

Many of the citizens of Paris disagreed. Among the most vocal of the detractors was a group of 47 self-proclaimed defenders of the city's cultural standards, including artists, writers, poets and sculptors, who joined forces to prevent the construction of Eiffel's tower. The critics initially doubted the design could actually be brought to reality, so their protest did not reach fever pitch until ground was actually broken.

On February 14, 1887, with construction barely begun, the Artist's Protest was officially launched with the publication in Le Temps of the “Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel.” The letter was addressed to M. Alphand, the director of works for the World Fair, and was signed by numerous artistic luminaries of the time, including Charles Garnier (designer of the Paris opera house), Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Gounod and Francois Coppée.

The opponents counted among France's most creative minds, and as such, Eiffel's beloved design was pelted with every manner of insult. The proposed tower would be a “belfry skeleton” (Paul Verlaine), “a truly tragic street lamp” (Leon Bloy), “a half-built factory pipe, a carcass waiting to be fleshed out with freestone or brick, a funnel-shaped grill, a hole-riddled suppository” (Joris-Karl Huysmans), a “mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed” (Francis Coppée). According to the protestors, were the tower to be constructed, it would undoubtedly make Paris and its residents the laughingstock of the entire world.

The war being waged was one of art versus engineering. In the late nineteenth century, engineers were considered uneducated, crass—certainly not possessing of any aesthetic sensibilities. The artists were therefore taken aback when Eiffel granted Le Temps an interview, in which he articulately and passionately defended his design against the onslaught from France 's cultural elite.

In his rebuttal, Eiffel expressed surprise that the artists had waited so long to make known their concerns—nearly two years after his design had been submitted to the Centennial Exposition Committee. The artists had undoubtedly been acquainted with the proposed tower, as one of their number, M. Charles Garnier, had been a member of the exposition committee. And at the time, Garnier had posed no objections to the project.

Eiffel also defended the aesthetics of his tower, saying, “…The curves of the four arrises (arches) of the monument…will give an impression of beauty because they will demonstrate to the viewer the boldness of the conception.”

As for the protestors' argument that the Eiffel Tower would overshadow the other historic monuments of Paris, Eiffel threw M. Garnier's own words back at him by asking if his Opéra did not appear crushed by the houses surrounding it, rather than vice versa. This had been a persistent complaint of M. Garnier, referring to the apartment buildings that encircled his masterpiece.

Finally, Eiffel touted the scientific utility his tower would serve, arguing that it was just as important for France to be viewed by the world as a nation of technical accomplishment and progress, as it was to be lauded as a cultural and artistic Mecca.

His case well made, Eiffel won the first round. The exhibition committee stood firmly behind Eiffel, and despite the artists' eloquent protest, construction of the tower proceeded.

However, the controversy was soon re-ignited when citizens living close to the worksite expressed fear that pieces of the tower might come crashing through their roofs, and one resident sued the city of Paris to halt the project. Construction was suspended for several months until Eiffel, desperate to get back to work, agreed to personally assume all liability should anything go wrong during construction—even agreeing to destroy the tower at his own expense should it prove to be dangerous in any way.

The embattled tower finally opened in 1889 to significant popular success. But by the early 1900s, Eiffel's tower was once again the center of debate. Demanding the tower be destroyed, opponents argued that since the 1889 World Fair was long over and the tower had lost its novelty, there was no justification for allowing an “industrial” construction to remain in Paris. At the time, there were very few who would defend the tower on the basis of aesthetics, and it was only due to its exceptional suitability for scientific research that the Eiffel Tower was once again spared.

For the rest of his life, Guy de Maupassant would declare that the reason he left France was to get away from the Eiffel Tower. But today, millions of people travel from all over the world just to get a glimpse of M. Eiffel's much-maligned tower.

Sources:

Green, Meg. The Eiffel Tower. Lucent Books, Inc., 2001.
Loyrette, Henri. Gustave Eiffel. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1985.
The official website of the Eiffel Tower: www.tour-eiffel.fr.

PLANES, PARACHUTES, and PACHYDERMS
The Untold History of The Eiffel Tower
by Karen Plumley

World famous and widely documented for its unusual architecture and unprecedented engineering achievement, the Eiffel Tower also possesses a lesser-known history of frivolous, unexpected, “who knew?” anecdotes, rarely found in traditional travel guides. The typical visitor to this Paris icon might be surprised to hear the largely untold tales that lurk just below the tower's official history.

Throughout its existence, both adventure- and attention-seekers have frequently used the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop for their sometimes stunning, often stupid stunts. On February 4, 1912, an Austrian-born tailor attempted to fly from the first level of the Eiffel Tower aided only by a “parachute garment” designed to “preserve flyers from dangerous falls.” His attempt at flight ended a few seconds later when the garment failed him, leaving him to die of fright before hitting the ground.

Fortunately, not all Eiffel Tower stunts produced such tragic consequences. On April 18, 1984, two British lovers decided to demonstrate their inseparability by parachuting off the Eiffel Tower together. Arriving on the third level, the pair at first masqueraded as any other tourists, snapping photos of each other and the spectacular view. The charade quickly ended when the two suddenly pulled out their parachutes and jumped off the tower. Fortunately, the 45-second flight did not mark the end of their relationship, as they landed without a hitch in the Champ-de-Mars garden.

On March 31, 1984, an American pilot and former marine who had performed 824 missions in Vietnam flew a Beechcraft Bonanza between the tower's pillars. When asked why he had done it, he replied, “Just for fun.” This American daredevil was just one of many who attempted the feat—and one of the few who succeeded.

The Eiffel Tower seems to inspire a conquering spirit in many, and numerous eccentrics have come to challenge the colossal structure in various, unusual ways. In 1891, a local baker decided to climb the 347 steps to the first platform on a pair of stilts. In 1959, another man tackled the massive monument by hopping all the way up to the first level on one leg.

The competition between man and tower became “official” on November 26, 1905, when the daily newspaper Le Sport held a “Stair Climbing Championship,” which drew 227 competitors to the starting line. The winner, a young man who ran the 674 steps to the second level in only 3 minutes and 12 seconds, won a Peugeot bike for his efforts.

And speaking of bikes…in 1923, encouraged by a sizable bet, Pierre Labric, an avid cyclist, journalist at the Petit Parisien and future mayor of the “Free Town of Montmartre”, circled the first floor platform and then rode down the 347 steps to the ground on a bicycle. A man on a unicycle accomplished the same feat in 1958, and on October 26, 1983, the stunting went high-tech when two men went down the stairs from the second level on the first French-built motocross bike.

Along with the numerous unscheduled performances, several unusual events have also been officially staged at the Eiffel Tower. On June 6, 1952, Rose Gold, otherwise known as the “air fairy,” performed a trapeze demonstration 118 meters above ground—the same height as the tower's second platform—without a net. And on August 26, 1989, famous tightrope walker Philippe Petit walked 700 meters from the Trocadéro Square to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower on a sloping cable strung across the River Seine.

Animals have also played a role in the Eiffel Tower's lesser-known history. In 1948, the director of the Bouglione Circus brought the oldest elephant in the world (85 years old) for a tour of the tower. Perhaps afraid of heights, the elderly pachyderm refused to venture past the first level. Following in the elephant's sizable footsteps, a Moscow circus bear was the first to take a spin on a skating rink that was opened on the tower's first level in 1969. And in 1997, in commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the French polar expeditions, the first floor platform was transformed into a giant ice floe, allowing a colony of penguins to temporarily make their home in the Eiffel Tower.

Along with its rowdy and roguish yarns, the Eiffel Tower also tells a tale of intrigue and espionage. During WWI, the tower came to the aid of its nation when its radiotelegraphic center was used to intercept enemy messages, one of which led to the arrest and execution of the infamous Danish dancer and spy, Mata Hari.

But perhaps the most entertaining anecdote in the history of the Eiffel Tower involves a certain Mr. Victor Lustig, Czech-born international swindler, master of five languages, possessor of forty-five known aliases—but best known as the man who sold the Eiffel Tower.

While in Paris in 1925, Lustig obtained counterfeit government stationery, which he used to present himself as a French official to five different scrap metal dealers. Upon inviting the gentlemen to a secret meeting at a Paris hotel, Lustig informed the dealers that the maintenance of the tower was simply costing the City of Paris too much money, and the monument was scheduled for demolition. As such, the Eiffel Tower was for sale to the highest bidder.

One of the dealers' bids was ultimately accepted—along with a bribe to seal the deal—and Lustig quickly departed for Austria with his ill-gotten gains. The man who “purchased” the Eiffel Tower was so embarrassed about having fallen for the scam that he never pressed charges. It seems that Mr. Lustig might have been content to go down in history as “The man who sold the Eiffel Tower”, but his victim apparently didn't want to be remembered as the sucker who bought it.

Sources:

Green, Meg. The Eiffel Tower. Lucent Books, Inc., 2001.
The official website of the Eiffel Tower: www.tour-eiffel.fr

Gustave Eiffel: The Man Behind The Masterpiece
by Karen Plumley

When nearly two million visitors besieged the newly opened Eiffel Tower during the Paris Centennial Exposition of 1889, Gustave Eiffel remarked, “I ought to be jealous of the tower, it is much more famous than I am.” A lighthearted remark perhaps, but true nonetheless. Despite a long and highly illustrious career, Eiffel was all but unknown outside of engineering circles during his lifetime.

Born on December 15, 1832, in Dijon, France, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel grew up to become an engineer at a time when those in the profession were widely considered uneducated and uncultured. Eiffel, however, did not fit the mold. He was a great admirer of classic literature, with a vast library of leather-bound works by Voltaire, Zola, Hugo, and others. He published 31 books and treatises documenting his numerous projects and experiments during his lifetime. He swam and fenced well into his 80s, and garnered honors and awards from governments around the world.

Eiffel's sophistication was not surprising considering his ancestry. Formerly from Germany, the family of Eiffel's father had built a prosperous tapestry-making business in France, which had provided several generations with a comfortable living. In the 18^th century, master merchant weavers were considered to be members of an elite trade, making Eiffel's origins an interesting combination of bourgeois and artisan.

It was Eiffel's father, however, who ended the family dynasty, when he rejected the family trade and ran away at 16 to join the army. Although a respected soldier who had served under Napoleon Bonaparte, Eiffel's father may not have earned such a respectable status in Dijon society had he not married the daughter of a wealthy lumber merchant.

Eiffel's mother was an intelligent woman with an exceptional head for business. She was not only responsible for Eiffel's early education, but she also built a thriving business in coal-loading and storage stations, as well as a shipping and delivery business, both of which were ultimately sold for a significant profit. Later, Eiffel's mother would also help him start his own business, and the two would remain very close throughout her life.

Despite their business success and lengthy, middle-class Parisian lineage, Eiffel's parents were considered nouveaux riches in 19^th century France, a fact that later hampered Eiffel's attempts to marry into good society in Bordeaux . When Madame de Grangent refused her daughter's hand to him based on his family's social position, Eiffel was mortified.

Not able to reach the upper middle class, Eiffel settled on the provincial middle class, marrying Marie Guadelet, the granddaughter of the brewer Edouard Régneau, in 1862. The couple had fifteen happy years and five children together before Marie caught pneumonia and died in 1887. Devastated, Eiffel would live another 36 years without ever marrying again.

Early Influences

In his youth, the two strongest influences in Eiffel's life were his uncle Jean-Baptiste Mollerat, a successful chemist who had invented a process for distilling vinegar from wood, and another local chemist, Michel Perret. The two men spent a lot of time with the curious boy, filling his head with ideas on everything from mining and chemistry to religion and philosophy.

Uncle Mollerat was not only an esteemed man of science, but also a man of strong republican views and friend to many distinguished revolutionaries. When he told Eiffel, “Make sure you remember, son, that all kings are rogues,” it greatly displeased the boy's Bonapartist family. Mollerat's political ideologies would eventually cause a rift within the family that would change the course of Eiffel's life.

At school, Eiffel was exceptionally inquisitive, but not particularly studious. While attending the Lycée Royal, the boy was bored and felt the atmosphere was confining and the classes a waste of time. It was not until his last two years at school that Eiffel found his niche — not in engineering classes, but in history and literature. His grades improved dramatically, and he ultimately graduated with a double baccalaureate in humanities and science.

Eiffel went on to attend Sainte Barbé College in Paris, in order to prepare for the entrance exams to the prestigious École Polytechnique. Although still not fond of school, Eiffel loved Paris and spent all his free time swimming in the Seine River, attending plays and visiting the Louvre. When he failed to gain entrance to the Polytechnique, Eiffel wasted no time brooding and instead entered the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, a liberal private school that eventually became known as one the top engineering schools in Europe.

Eiffel declared chemistry his major, as his uncle Mollerat had promised him a job as a chemist at his vinegar works in Dijon. However, in 1855, shortly before Eiffel was to earn his degree, his parents had a falling out with his uncle and were no longer on speaking terms. Under the circumstances, Eiffel could not take the job his uncle had once offered him, and fate it would seem, forced him to pursue a new career path.

Life before the tower

With no job prospects in sight, Eiffel eventually took a position in an engineering firm headed by Charles Nepveu, an official of the French society of Civil Engineering. Although the company went bankrupt a short time later, Eiffel was hired as chief of research by the Belgian firm that subsequently bought the company.

In 1858, at the age of 25, Eiffel got his first big break. He was given the responsibility of overseeing the construction of a 1,600-foot bridge of cast iron, which would span the Garonne River near the city of Bordeaux — and he was to complete the task in just two years. With such a short time to finish the project, Eiffel was inspired to develop the first of many significant engineering innovations: a system of hydraulic presses (machines that were operated by water, steam and compressed air), which enabled the workers to drive the structure's foundation materials into the 80-foot-deep river. Not only did the bridge open on schedule, but Eiffel's reputation as an innovative and efficient engineer was also established.

In 1864, now married and permanently settled in Paris, Eiffel ventured out to start his own business. Over the next twenty years, Eiffel would develop and perfect numerous innovative methods that would ultimately assist in the construction of his magnum opus. For example, while designing the entrance hall of the Palais des Machines for the 1878 Paris Universal Exposition, Eiffel developed a method that created sturdy but lightweight trusses and arches. The structures had a web-like appearance that made them interesting to look at, but also enabled them to withstand the elements, including high wind.

One of his first big projects with his own company was the construction of the Sioule Bridge, which stood 262 feet above the Sioule River, making it one of the world's tallest bridges at the time. The project enabled Eiffel to test three important innovations, which he would later implement in the construction of the Eiffel Tower: He used wrought iron rather than the heavy, brittle iron normally used for bridges, as he found it to be stronger, more flexible, and better able to withstand strong winds; he curved the edges of the piers, which were usually square or rectangular, to create a more durable, stable base; and he developed a system known as “launching,” which used rockers to more easily move individual pieces of the bridge into place, like a giant seesaw.

Eiffel's reputation continued to grow with his portfolio of projects, which included prefabricated campaign bridges for the military, the famous Bon Marché department store in Paris, iron framing for the cathedral of Notre-Dame, and his most prominent work before his famed tower — the Statue of Liberty.

Created by noted sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, the Statue of Liberty was to be presented by the French as a token of goodwill and friendship to the United States in honor of its Centennial Exposition of 1876. Bartholdi had designed the 151-foot woman, but did not know how to best construct the statue so it could be disassembled for shipping to New York . Also, how could the massive statue be stabilized to withstand the Atlantic winds that were known to gust through Lady Liberty's intended home in New York Harbor?

Enter Gustave Eiffel. Having established a solid reputation as a man in the business of making things that did not fall down, Eiffel was called upon to assist in the construction of the statue. Eiffel built an iron skeleton frame to which sheets of metal could then be attached, and embedded vertical steel beams in the granite base of the statue to which thin copper sheets were attached. The result was a lighter but stronger statue that was able to bear immense weight and withstand the harsh elements. Once again, Eiffel had demonstrated his ability to solve the most complex and stubborn technical problems using innovative techniques that nobody had previously dared to try.

In 1889, Eiffel's vast experience and innovative methods culminated in the construction of his famous tower on the Champs de Mars. But his glory days were unfortunately short-lived. Despite careful planning of three ambitious projects after the tower — the central metropolitan line in Paris, an underwater bridge across the English Channel and an observatory on Mont-Blanc — the esteemed engineer's greatest success would also be the last major structure he ever built.

In 1887, Eiffel's company had begun to design and build the patented locks that were to be used in the Panama Canal project. However, less than a year later, the company that hired him went bankrupt, and the project was halted. For the next five years, an investigation was conducted into the bankruptcy, which had wiped out the savings of hundreds of thousands of French investors. Eiffel was accused of misusing funds, and for several years he invested much of his money and energy into fighting the charges. Eiffel was ultimately cleared of all wrongdoing, but after the strain of the investigation and the Eiffel Tower project, he was more than ready to give up the limelight. In 1893, Eiffel resigned as chairman of the board of his company.

Life after the Tower

Although officially absent from the engineering scene after 1893, Eiffel was hardly in retirement. For the next thirty years, Eiffel lived and worked in the tower that bore his name, and these years were in many ways the most creative and fulfilling of his life. He now had time to devote to his other interests such as meteorology, aerodynamics and telecommunications.

On December 27, 1923, Gustave Eiffel died peacefully at home at the age of ninety-one. Although Eiffel had been proud of his tower, he often felt that its fame had prevented a public and professional appreciation of his larger talents as an engineer and researcher.

When Eiffel bestowed the family name on his tower, it was a justifiable act of pride, but one he might have come to regret. Over time, the name and the monument became one and the same, while the man behind the masterpiece gradually disappeared in the towering shadow of his creation.

Sources:

Green, Meg. The Eiffel Tower. Lucent Books, Inc., 2001.
Loyrette, Henri. Gustave Eiffel. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1985.
The official website of the Eiffel Tower: www.tour-eiffel.fr

Karen Plumley is a regular contributor to Paris Eiffel Tower News and other tourism websites. Should you want her to write for you, please reach her at .

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