The Eiffel Tower towering 300 meters, is an iron tower built by Gustave Eiffel and his staff for the Universal Exhibition of 1889. Located at the end of the Champ de Mars, on the Seine, the Parisian monument is a symbol of France and its capital. The Tower is the ninth most visited site in the country in 2006 and the most visited paying monument in the world with 6893 million visitors in 2007.
It stood at an original height of 300 meters; it was subsequently extended many feet with antennas to 324 meters. The Eiffel Tower remained the highest building in the world for over 40 years. Used in the past for many scientific experiments, it now sends out radio and television programs.
Imagined in 1884, built between 1887 and 1889 and inaugurated for the Universal Exhibition of 1889 in Paris, the Eiffel Tower symbolizes today the whole country of France.
Yet it was not always this way. The Eiffel Tower was at first part of the country’s economic showcase. From 1875, the nascent Third Republic, characterized by chronic political instability was struggling to survive.
In government, the political teams succeed at a steady pace to improve the country economically. According Léon Gambetta, it is often believed it was because of the ministers “opportunistic”, but in fact had more to do with legislator whose work laid the principles still in force today: compulsory education, secularism, freedom of the press and so on.
The Centennial Tower is the first draft of a credible Tower 1 000 feet (≈ 300 meters) envisioned in 1874 by American engineers and Clark Reeves for the Universal Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia. This was never made however when funding fill though.But the company then still paid more attention to technical progress than in social progress.
It is this faith in the benefits of science that gave birth to the world exhibitions. But from the first exhibition (Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, London, 1851), governments quickly realize that behind the technological challenge is the ability to showcase political profile; it would be a shame not to take advantage of this. By demonstrating its industrial know-how, the country hosting the exhibition also is able to advance its superiority over other European powers, which were then prevailing as the dominant powers of the world.
In this context, France repeatedly hosed the World’s Fair, in 1855, in 1867 and 1878. Jules Ferry, President of the Council from 1883 to 1885, decided to revive the idea of holding a new world exhibition in France. On 8 November 1884, he signed a decree formally establishing the holding of a World Exhibition in Paris from May 5 to 31 October 1889. The year chosen is was not unintentional; it symbolizes the centennial of the French Revolution. Paris will be once again the “center” of the world. Although the New World side of things are changing quickly and on the other side of the Atlantic the economic power of the young United States of America is growing where the idea of a tower 300 meter tower first came into being. Indeed, at the Universal Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, the American engineers Clark and Reeves, imagine a draft cylindrical tower 9 meters in diameter maintained by metal shrouds, anchored on a circular base 45 meters in diameter, for a total height of 1,000 feet (300 meters). Lack of funds, their project will never see the light of day, but will still be published in France in the journal Nature.
In the same vein, the French engineer Sébillot draws his inspiration from the United States tower the idea of a “round-sun” iron enlighten Paris. To do this, he joined with the architect Jules Bourdais, who was originally working for the palace of the Trocadero for the Universal Exhibition of 1878. Together they will develop a draft “tour flagship granite”, 300 meters high. Several versions including complete drafts by Gustave Eiffel were made but which ultimately will never be built.
Gustave Eiffel who had worked on many early concepts of the tower designed the final version that was built. Originally the Tower was planned to be torn down. In fact a conman went around selling the Tower to scrap dealers in Paris for a time making millions in the process. Eventually Paris came to love the Tower and decided to keep it.
