The task that the Parisian authorities entrusted to the architects was “to explore the possibility of erecting a square-based iron tower, 125 meters in diameter and 300 meters in height, on the Champ de Mars”. Among 107 projects, the proposals of scientist and entrepreneur Gustave Eiffel, engineers Maurice Cochlin and Emile Nougier and architect Stephen Sauvestre were selected, according to the official website of the administration of the main attraction in Paris.Émile Nougier and Maurice Koechlin, the two chief engineers of the Eiffel company, already imagined in June 1884 a very high tower. It was to take the form of a large pylon with four columns of lattice girders, divided at the base and converging with each other. At the top, he was supposed to connect them to each other with metal beams at regular intervals.
The design of the tower was a bold extension of this principle to a height of 300 meters, equivalent to the symbolic figure of 1,000 feet. On September 18, 1884, Eiffel filed a patent “for a new configuration allowing the construction of metal poles and pylons capable of reaching heights of more than 300 meters”. Contrary to popular belief, Gustave Eiffel himself did not design the tower.
To make the project more acceptable to public opinion, Nougier and Koehlin commissioned architect Steven Sauvestre to work on the exterior of the project. Sauvestre features stone plinths for the legs, monumental arches connecting the columns and the first level, large halls with glazed walls on each level, an onion-shaped design for the top, and various other decorative elements to embellish the whole structure. In the end, the design was simplified, but some elements, such as the large arches at the base, were retained, which in part gives the tower its very distinctive and expressive appearance. The Paris authorities planned to demolish it in 20 years, having granted a concession to the Eiffel company for this period. However, Eiffel cleverly installed a radio antenna and a wireless telegraph transmitter in the tower, and the government eventually decided it could not be demolished. The value of the tower for sending and receiving wireless messages, particularly for the French military, compelled the city to renew the Eiffel concession when it expired in 1909. Today, more than 100 antennas on the tower transmit radio and television programs around the world.
The structural elements were manufactured at the architect’s factory
Photo: AFP/Ludovic MARINAssembly of the supports began on July 1, 1887 and was completed twenty-two months later. All the elements were manufactured at the Eiffel factory, located in Levallois-Perret at the gates of Paris. Each of the 18,000 pieces used to build the tower was specially designed and calculated, traced to tenths of a millimeter, then assembled to form new pieces of about five meters each. The team of builders who worked on the large designs of the metal viaducts were in charge of assembling this gigantic assembly complex. From 150 to 300 workers worked 24 hours a day on the site of the tower.At first the parts were assembled at the factory with bolts, then one by one they were replaced by rivets, which were compressed during cooling, providing a very tight fit. Each rivet assembled required a team of four people: one to heat it, another to hold it in place, a third to shape the head and a fourth to hammer it to the mass. Only a third of the two and a half million rivets used in the construction of the tower were inserted directly into place, according to its official portal. s rested on a concrete foundation laid a few meters below ground level on a layer of compacted gravel. Each corner edge rested on its own support block with a pressure of 3 to 4 kilograms per square centimeter, and each block was connected to other walls.
On the Seine side, the builders used watertight metal boxes and pumped compressed air into the piles to work below the water level. On December 7, 1887, the docking of the main rooms up to the first floor was completed. The tower compartments were transported by steam cranes, which themselves climbed the tower in the direction of travel using skids. When designing the tower of the same name, Eiffel provided himself with a private studio at the top, where he received famous guests such as Thomas Edison. It has since been converted into a recreation of Eiffel’s office with wax figures of himself, his daughter and Edison and is open to the public, Travel and Leisure reports. Eiffel, a keen scientist, placed a meteorological laboratory on the third floor of the tower, where he conducted research in physics, aerodynamics and built a wind tunnel. Eiffel opened the doors of the laboratory to other scientists who could also use them for their experiments.
Maupassant called the tower “the base of the monument to the Cyclopes”
Photo: AFP/Ludovic MARINEven before the construction was completed, the tower was already the subject of many disputes, the best people of France opposed its construction. “Protest against Monsieur Tour Eiffel”, published in the newspaper Le Temps and addressed to the director of the Universal Exhibition, Monsieur Alphand, signed several great names in the world of literature and art, including Charles Gounod, Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas Jr. Other critics further developed the venomous diatribe, hurling insults such as: “this truly tragic lamppost” (Léon Blois), “this belfry framework” (Paul Verlaine), “this iron gymnastic apparatus mast, incomplete, tangled and deformed” (François Coppé), “that gigantic, clumsy skeleton on a pedestal that seems built to bear a colossal monument to the Cyclopes, but which simply shrinks into an absurdly thin shape, like a factory chimney” (Maupassant).
The tower “caught” Mata Hari
Under these conditions, it only took Eiffel and company five months to build the foundations, and twenty-one months to complete the assembly of the metal parts of the tower. Considering the simple means available at the time, this could be considered record speed. The assembly of the tower was a marvel of precision, which was unanimously accepted by all observers of the time. Construction work began in January 1887 and was completed on March 31, 1889. On a narrow platform at the top, the Eiffel was awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest decoration.
Once the tower is completed, criticism fades at the sight of the completed masterpiece and in light of the enormous popular acclaim with which it has been received. During the Universal Exhibition of 1889, it was visited by two million people. During World War I, the French army used the tower’s wireless station to intercept enemy communications from Berlin. In 1914, the French managed to organize a counter-attack during the Battle of the Marne, having secretly learned that the German army was stopping its progress. Three years later, a station atop the Eiffel Tower intercepted a coded message between Germany and Spain that contained details of “Operation H-21”. Based in part on this report, the French arrested, convicted and executed the legendary Mata Hari for spying for Germany, writes American historian Christopher Klein. Using everything from parachutes to bungee cords, adventurers have used the tower for decades to perform daring stunts. However, not all of them survived. In 1912, French tailor Franz Reichelt tried to fly from the first floor of the tower in a spring-loaded parachute suit, but fell to the ground from a height of 60 meters. Fourteen years later, aviator Leon Collo died trying to fly his plane under a tower span, but it became entangled in a wireless station antenna and died in a ball of fire. Photo: Thomas SAMSON / AFP
When Germany occupied France during World War II, Hitler ordered the demolition of the Eiffel Tower, but this order was never carried out. The French resistance fighters took their revenge on the occupants: they cut the cables of the elevator of the Tower, so that the Nazis were forced to climb the stairs to hoist their flag.
The largest advertising platform in the world
The Eiffel Tower is one of the most visited places of memory in the world, welcoming nearly seven million visitors a year before the coronavirus pandemic and more than 300 million people since its opening. Over the years, the tower has changed, adding lighting, new coats of paint and many successive installations. Lighting first appeared on the Eiffel Tower in 1985 with the addition of 336 yellow-orange spotlights, but the now famous twinkling light show of 20,000 bulbs lit up the night sky for the first time on the evening of the New Year 1999, heralding the new millennium.
The Eiffel Tower was once the tallest billboard in the world. As dusk fell over Paris between 1925 and 1936, a quarter of a million colored bulbs attached to three sides of the tower’s spire lit up to compose the 30-meter vertical letters of French car manufacturer Citroën. The advertisement shone so brightly that it could be seen nearly 35 kilometers away, and Charles Lindbergh used it as a beacon when he landed in Paris on his solo transatlantic flight in 1927.When the Eiffel Tower opened in 1889, it was reddish brown in color. Ten years later, it was covered in yellow paint. The tower was also tan and brown before the current specially blended “Eiffel Tower Brown” was adopted in 1968. Approximately 60 tons of paint is applied to the tower every seven years. This not only preserves the appearance of the so-called Iron Lady (“Iron Lady”), but also protects the iron from rust. The massive iron structure withstands the wind, but sways in a storm. However, the wind isn’t the only thing that can move the huge tower. The heat of the sun also affects it, causing the iron to expand, causing the tower to grow an average of fifteen centimeters during the warm months.
