A Beacon of French Culture and Pride

Gustave Eiffel was trained as an industrial chemist to take over a family business manufacturing paints and other chemicals. A quarrel intervened and instead of becoming an industrialist he started work as a 23 year old during 1855 for an enterprise designing and manufacturing iron train bridges.

Because of his excellent understanding of metallurgy he soon made a name for himself in the field of structural steel engineering and his efforts attracted the attention of the sculptor Frederick Auguste Bartholdi who was commissioned to create the Statue of Liberty to be erected in New York. Bartholdi requested Eiffel to design and manufacture the steel skeleton for the famous Lady.

During 1886, a design competition for Architects and Engineers was held for a monument to be erected at the entrance to an International Exhibition to be held during 1889 in Paris. Eiffel`s proposal of a steel tower was one of 700 designs submitted and the adjudicators of the competition were unanimous in declaring his entry the winner. Not everybody in Parisian cultural circles was pleased with what was termed a useless monstrosity and a petition signed by 300 prominent artists and literati, was widely circulated.

Work on the construction of the tower commenced on 1 July 1887 in the Parc du Champs-de-Mars. The components were prepared in Eiffel`s factory on the outskirts of Paris. Each of the 18 000 components to be used to construct the monument were designed to tolerances less than a millimetre bolted into sections of 5 metres each. These were transported to site and erected by 300 workers. The components were placed in position and joined together by white hot steel rivets contracting during cooling resulting in a tight fit.

Teams of four workers were required to place rivets; one to heat it, another to hold it in place, a third to shape the head of the rivet and a fourth to beat it with a sledgehammer. Some 2 500 000 rivets were used in the assembly of the tower and approximately 800 000 were positioned on site. This work was hot and dangerous and frequently took place at height. It was a miracle that only one fatality occurred during the entire construction of the tower.
 
The French journalist Emile Goudeau who visited the site at the beginning of 1889 graphically described it as follows;
 
“A thick cloud of tar and coal smoke seized the throat, and we were deafened by the din of metal screaming beneath the hammer. Over there they were still working on the bolts (rivets); workmen with their iron bludgeons perched on a ledge of just a few centimetres wide, took turns at striking the bolts. One would have taken them for blacksmiths contentedly beating out a rhythm on an anvil in some village forge, except that these smiths were not striking up and down vertically but horizontally, and with each blow came a shower of sparks, these black figures, appearing larger than life against the background of the open sky, looked as if they were reaping lightning bolts in the clouds”
 
Eiffel`s planning was immaculate and the tower was completed on 31 March 1889, 22 months after work had commenced on site and shortly thereafter was opened by the Prince of Wales. The tower is 300 m tall, with a mass of 8 500 tons and cost 7.8 French Franks at the time. The magazine Scientific American commented that it was constructed without design faults, delays and major accidents. The Eiffel Tower as it became known was to remain the tallest structure in the world until 1930 when it was overtaken by the Chrysler building in New York.

The structure was conceived to be temporary and was due to be demolished after the exhibition and again during 1909, but was saved because it was the ideal platform for the antennas for the new science of wireless transmission. During the German occupation of Paris in 1940, the locals removed the electric cables feeding the lifts. It was part of the German propaganda for Hitler to ascend the tower which he declined and he remained at ground level. When the Allied Military Forces approached Paris in 1944, Hitler commanded General Dietrich von Chiltitz, the German Commander of Paris to destroy the Eiffel Tower, he famously ignored the command.

The Eiffel Tower to this day remains an iconic symbol of style and French culture attracting millions of visitors from France and abroad.

Pieter Rautenbach