Paris, France 23 July 2016

As an engineering student, I take special interest in well-designed products and structures. I am most interested in the product development aspect of mechanical engineering, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying incredible buildings, bridges, roads, and sculptures. The highlight of this past week for me while in Paris, for example, was getting to learn a bit about the Eiffel Tower.

Here’s some history on the once hated structure. Yes, Parisians hated it.  They thought it was a hideous eyesore when it was built. Little did they know it that would be one of the most iconic structures in the world and the essential symbol for Paris.

In 1887, the French government was looking for someone to build an entranceway for the World’s Fair in 1889. It was initially meant to stand for six months, and to be taken down before winter. The government held a competition with three constraints: 1. The tower must be designed by a person in France – anyone could submit a design. 2. All the materials would have to be from French origin. 3. The tower would have to be over 300 meters (1000 feet) high. To put that into perspective, at the time, it would be the tallest man made structure in the world, surpassing the tallest building in the world by 500 feet. It held that record for 41 years, until the Chrysler building was built.

The French designers submitted their designs to the government. One of them was a structure of a gigantic elephant – just think, the symbol for France could be a 1000 foot tall elephant. The already famous Eiffel Company submitted a design, and it was approved. At the time, it seemed impossible to build a building that tall out of metal. Mathematicians figured that any building over 700 feet would plainly collapse. The wind would knock it down and it would be a disaster. No one had even attempted to build such a structure, but Eiffel’s design seemed to be the sturdiest when compared to others’.

The expected cost to make this iron structure was about 35 million euros in today’s money. The government offered to pay 20% of the costs, but Eiffel had to figure out how to scrape up the rest. Gustave Eiffel was a millionaire, but he wasn’t THAT rich, so he set some rules. If he were to pay the 80%, then the tower would have to be named after him and he would get the royalties from visitors for the next twenty years. At the time, they figured 20 years would be enough time for him to gain back all the money he invested into the tower’s construction (and after those twenty years, they would take down the building).

Little did they know that in just six months after the tower was completed, Eiffel broke even.

On May 15^th 1889, the Eiffel Tower was opened for visitors, two years and two months after construction began. At first, artists and designers expressed strong disgust toward the massive monument, “imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal”. They couldn’t believe that the “giddy, ridiculous tower” could even be present in their precious city. Civilians were terrified of the structure, many thinking it would either collapse on their homes or become a giant magnet. Eiffel thought these claims were ridiculous, but he insured everyone, promising that if their home was damaged by the tower’s fall he would cover the cost. It seemed as if the entirety of Paris was against the tower.

As time went on, the hatred faded, but it became time to bring down the tower (in 1909). However, since Eiffel was a very intelligent man, he had decided to build himself an experiment room at the top of the tower. His experiments included using the tower as a radio antenna, and in 1898, he managed to create the first radio transmission through that antenna. The government recognized the importance of the tower, both culturally and scientifically, so they decided not to bring down the tower. This radio later helped during both world wars, specifically Word War I, in which the antenna was used to intercept enemies’ radio signals. Thanks again to Eiffel, the tower still stands.

Another cool thing I liked about the tower were the lifts. Eiffel didn’t want his guests to have to climb in thousands of feet up stairs. That would be bad for business. He wanted to make the tower as accessible as possible, so he contacted elevator companies. At the time, elevators could only move vertically, which would mean in order to incorporate an elevator into the tower’s structure, it would have to be dead center at the base of the tower. Eiffel thought this would be ridiculous. It would ruin the aesthetic, and it would defeat the original purpose of the tower: to be an entranceway to the fair. Desperate, he contacted the best cable company in the United States, the Otis Brothers. Sound familiar? Check the brand of the next elevator you ride. He asked them if they could build an elevator-style car that could lift people up the tower leg’s incline. They hadn’t tried something like that before, but they engineered a way. They figured out how to get people up to the first level (for visitors) and then they created an elevator to get special people (VIPs) up to the top, where Eiffel had his small loft and experiment area.

But wait, I said that one of the requirements for the tower was that it had to be all-French made…?

In order to work around this, Eiffel and the Otis brothers were sneaky; they acquired French passports and claimed to be French for anyone that asked. At the time, there was no internet to fact-check, so they were able to pull off this stunt.

The lifts have since been updated, but a notable fact is that their cables were actually cut during World War II by the French Resistance. The Germans had captured Paris and they had planned to fly the German flag at the top. The French made sure that if Hitler wanted to go up their beloved tower, he would have to climb the stairs.

The construction of the Eiffel Tower was incredible. In 1889, the construction workers didn’t really have cranes or the advanced tools we have today. They worked quickly and swiftly, even through the freezing wind during the winters and sweltering heat from the summer. The structure has lasted and isn’t coming down anytime soon.

This was my favorite engineering wonder so far, and my favorite structure/building as well. I mean just look at that view!