THE EIFFEL TOWER

G. EIFFEL

HE notion of a tower 1,000 feet in height is not new.

THE notion of ad the imagination of Englishmen and

Americans. As early as 1833, the celebrated English engineer Trevitick proposed to construct a cast iron tower 1,000 feet high, of which the diameter should be 100 feet at the base and four feet at the summit. But his project was never put into execution, and was but imperfectly worked out, even on paper.

At the time of the Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, the great American engineers, Messrs. Clarke and Reeves, brought forward a new project. Their tower was to consist of an iron cylinder nine metres in diameter as nucleus, and supported by a series of metal buttresses disposed round it, and starting from a base with a diameter of forty-five metres. This was a distinct improvement on the English project, although it still left room for criticism; and yet the Americans, in spite of their enterprising spirit and the national enthusiasm excited by this conception, shrank from its execution.

In 1881, M. Sébillot proposed to light Paris by an electric lamp placed at a height of 1,000 feet. This idea, which has, in my opinion, no practical value, had no better

fate than its predecessors. I need only mention the designs, some in masonry, some in metal-work and masonry combined, others, lastly, in wood, like the proposed tower for the Brussels Exhibition, which were produced at the same time as my own. But all these remained in the domain of fancy, proposals easy to frame but hard to execute. I come to the project which has been realized.

In 1885, after the studies which my engineers and I had occasion to make with regard to the lofty metal piers which support railway viaducts like that of Garabit, we were led to believe that it was possible to construct these, without any great difficulty, of a much greater height than any hitherto made which did not exceed 230 feet. We planned on these lines a great pier for a viaduct, which should have a height of 395 feet and a base of 131 feet.

The result of these studies led me, with a view to the Exhibition of 1889, to propose the erection of the tower, now completed, of which the first plans had been drawn out by two of my chief engineers, Messrs. Nouguier and Koechlin, and by M. Sauvestre, an architect.

The fundamental idea of these pylons, or great archways, is based on a method of construction peculiar to me, of which the principle consists in giving to the edges of the pyramid a curve of such a nature that this pyramid shall be capable of resisting the force of the wind, without necessitating the junction of the edges by diagonals, as is usually done.

On this principle the tower was designed in the form of

a pyramid, with four curved supports, isolated from each other and joined only by the platforms of the different storeys. Higher up only, and where the four supports are sufficiently close to each other, the ordinary diagonals are used.

In June, 1886, a commission nominated by M. Lockroy, then Minister of Commerce and Industry, finally accepted the plans I had submitted to it, and on January 8, 1887, the agreement with the State and the City of Paris was signed fixing the conditions under which the tower was to be constructed.

It is needless to state that considerable energy and perseverance were required to attain this result, for there was much resistance to overcome, and my project had many opponents.

But I was sustained by the belief that what I proposed would contribute to the honour of our national industry and to the success of the Exhibition, and it was not without a legitimate sense of satisfaction that I saw an army of navvies begin, on January 28, 1887, those excavations at the bottom of which were to rest the four feet of the tower which had never been out of my thoughts for the last two years.

I felt, moreover, in spite of the violent attacks to which my project had been exposed, that public opinion was on 'my side, and that a crowd of unknown friends were ready to honour this bold enterprise as soon as it took form. The imagination of men was struck by the colossal dimensions of the edifice, especially in the matter of height.