EIFFEL TOWER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 May 1939, Page 6

EIFFEL TOWER

CELEBRATION OF FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY. AN INTERESTING HISTORY. The best-known monument in the whole world, the Eiffel Tower, celebrated its fiftieth birthday on March 31. It was built by Gustave Eiffel for the Paris Exhibition of 1889, and was the most discussed and criticised edifice ever erected. Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris Opera, led an attack on the project before the foundations were laid, -and Francois Coppee bewailed it in verse.~The Eiffel Tower took two years to build, but it paid for itself completely in the first year. It was the central attraction of the 1889 Exhibition, and it has remained the ‘centre of every Paris Exhibition since. A copy of it was begun in England, at Wembley. The Eiffel Tower became a rage. It was reproduced as a tiny ornament, paper weight, clock stand, it figured on brooches,- book covers, watch cases, and it was impossible to turn anywhere without seeing its outline reproduced on 1 some object or other. Even to this day, almost half the souvenirs of Paris sold to provincial visitors are reproductions of the Eiffel Tower. Eight thousand five hundred tons of iron, and over a million rivets, a thousand feet high, are statistics familiar to all. Two sets of lifts are employed, the first taking passengers to the first and second floors, the second set taking them from the second floor to the top. Each cabin, holding 65 people, is suspended by five steel cables, of which four could break and the fifth still be quite capable of sustaining the car. Ten thousand visitors can visit the Eiffel Tower at a time. There is a restaurant on one of the platforms of the tower, and at one time there was also a theatre. During 1 the Exhibition of 1889, the “Figaro” printed an Eiffel Tower edition every day on the first floor. There were many rumours of lives lost while the tower was being erected, but not a single workman was killed. A wooden floor, something like the deck of a ship, was pulled up as ■the tower rose higher and higher, and on this the men worked. Too much time would have been lost to come to the ground for the midday meal, so a restaurant was built on the wooden flooring and went up with them. The parts of the tower were made outside Paris. Each was numbered and sent to the Champ de Mars to be put in its allotted place. The feet of the Eiffel Tower are sunk in cylinders encased in cement foundations, and by hydraulic presses six men can lift up one side of the tower. This was actually done, for on reaching the second floor the engineers discovered that it was not absolutely vertical, and one side was raised and the perpendicular restored. A large number of people climb the 347 steps to the first floor, and the more courageous are ready to climb a further 327 to the second floor, but to reach the top 1710 steps would have to be climbed. Although built by M. Gustave Eiffel, the design of the tower was not ■ his work. It was conceived by an Alsatian engineer, Maurice Koechlin, : for the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876, but was not accepted by the : Americans. ; Time signals that circle the world, ■ a broadcast station, and television are among the services it has rendered undreamed of by Gustave Eiffel.