Which described the eiffel tower in 1890

The uprights rest on concrete foundations installed a few metres below ground-level on top of a layer of compacted gravel. Each corner edge rests on its own supporting block, applying to it a pressure of 3 to 4 kilograms per square centimetre , and each block is joined to the others by walls.

On the Seine side of the construction, the builders used watertight metal caissons and injected compressed air , so that they were able to work below the level of the water. The tower was assembled using wooden scaffolding and small steam cranes mounted onto the tower itself.

The assembly of the first level was achieved by the use of twelve temporary wooden scaffolds, 30 metres high, and four larger scaffolds of 40 metres each. On December 7, , the joining of the major girders up to the first level was completed. The pieces were hauled up by steam cranes, which themselves climbed up the Tower as they went along using the runners to be used for the Tower's lifts.

It only took five months to build the foundations and twenty-one to finish assembling the metal pieces of the Tower. Considering the rudimentary means available at that period, this could be considered record speed. The assembly of the Tower was a marvel of precision , as all chroniclers of the period agree.

The construction work began in January and was finished on March 31, On the narrow platform at the top, Eiffel received his decoration from the Legion of Honour. Over there they were still working on the bolts: workmen with their iron bludgeons, perched on a ledge just a few centimetres wide, took turns at striking the bolts these in fact were the rivets.

One could 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 as 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.

Lemercier, Paris Even before the end of its construction, the Tower was already at the heart of much debate. Enveloped in criticism from the biggest names in the world of Art and Literature, the Tower managed to stand its ground and achieve the success it deserved. The Exposition Universelle of Charles Garnier. Alexandre Dumas. Once the Tower was finished the criticism burnt itself out in the presence of the completed masterpiece, and in the light of the enormous popular success with which it was greeted.

It received two million visitors during the World's Fair of Is the City of Paris any longer to associate itself with the baroque and mercantile fancies of a builder of machines, thereby making itself irreparably ugly and bringing dishonour?

To comprehend what we are arguing one only needs to imagine for a moment a tower of ridiculous vertiginous height dominating Paris,just like a gigantic black factory chimney, its barbarous mass overwhelming and humiliating all our monuments and belittling our works of architecture, which will just disappear before this stupefying folly.

And for twenty years we shall see spreading across the whole city, a city shimmering with the genius of so many centuries, we shall see spreading like an ink stain, the odious shadow of this odious column of bolted metal.

In an interview in the newspaper Le Temps of February 14 , Eiffel gave a reply to the artists' protest, neatly summing up his artistic doctrine:. Are we to believe that because one is an engineer, one is not preoccupied by beauty in one's constructions, or that one does not seek to create elegance as well as solidity and durability?

Is it not true that the very conditions which give strength also conform to the hidden rules of harmony? The counterweight moves while driving under the elevator path. The cables that support the cab are six, two of which are connected to the counterweight and four belong to the system of the pulleys pulleys. They are made of steel wire. Only one of these cables would suffice to carry, without breaking, cabin and travelers.

In addition, there is added a safety brake. The counterweight is also equipped with a safety device, its fall is impossible. The Otis lift is adopted in the North and South Pillars, and elevates visitors to the second floor with a stop at the first. It provides a race of meters; it is the first time that an engineer has had to carry out such a considerable work; Mr.

Edoux has been very successful in solving the problem. The most powerful one had been installed in , in one of the towers of Trocadero, where it still works; its height is 63 meters, and it is also Mr. The meter race is cut in half by an intermediate platform located exactly meters away, which is the real starting point for the Edoux lift, hydraulic and vertical. The operation is very easy and the general layout does honor to its manufacturer.

One of the cabins is arranged at the end of a piston, which carries the transport from the intermediate floor to the top, ie 80 meters. From the upper part of the first cabin and the two ends of the rudder, start four cables which, passing on pulleys placed at the top of the Tower, support the second cabin. Two of the cables attach to a rudder in the middle of which is suspended this cabin, the other two cables are fixed to the body of the cabin itself.

When the upper cabin rises, the inner-cab, which serves as a counterweight, goes down naturally. It follows that to travel the meter route, there is a station at the intermediate floor, as in a railway. Each cabin traveling halfway, there is interchange of travelers on the intermediate floor, without any clutter, the "amounts" pass through a door other than the "descendants", without loss of time either.

A safety brake Backmann system makes it possible to answer absolutely any accident and to affirm that, even in the cases of rupture of an important organ of the elevator, the visitors, carried by the cabin, would have to dread no fall. The duration of a complete ascent, from the foot to the top of the Eiffel Tower, by means of the elevators, is barely 7 minutes.

All the elevators are served by four multi-tubular boilers of the Collet et Cie system, 80 meters of heating surface and 3 meters of grid surface, each stamped at 12 kilograms and developing together, per hour, 6, kilograms of steam.

This elevator raises 3, people per hour on the first and second floors, and at the top. Via the stairs and lifts, 5, people can climb the Eiflel Tower, and the length of stay is not limited.

The number of people that can hold the Tower, when it receives its maximum of visitors, is distributed as follows:. A city in a ship mast. To all these technical details, to all these figures, it is necessary to give life, by describing the sensations that one experiences successively during the duration of a complete ascent of the Tower. We can do no better than to borrow the terms from a writer of the greatest merit, who knows how to combine with a talent of superior pen, an exquisite sensibility.

It is to the author of the beautiful book entitled Les Larrons, a work of social pity, an eloquent plea for the disinherited, the most beautiful and the most moved, composed since Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to M. Hugues Le Roux, that we took the following story:. Some people have been wearing ear caps and stuffed gloves. It seems that the hats of high form offer, in the wind, an unfortunate catch; on the other hand, the cold of irons causes, in the long run, a burning burn.

We enter the pillar on the right, where opens one of the stairs. The steps that lead to the first platform 60 meters above the ground are gentle to climb. Eiffel advises to imitate his approach. He climbs very slowly, his right arm to the ramp. He swings the body from one hip to the other. He takes advantage of this momentum to cross each degree. The slope is so inclined that it can be caused while climbing, and it does not blow into the landing of the first floor.

Four pavilions rise here to give shelter to restaurants, brasseries, bars, cabarets. The Eiffel tower is a puddled iron structure, an iron that has lost some of its carbon and therefore rusts less quickly.

It is pyramidal in shape with slightly curved sides. It measures m high and is divided into 4 parts separated by a floor. Until the second floor the tower is made of 4 distinct pillars, but from there they join in a single pylon which rises vertically to the top.

The floors are successively at altitudes of 57m, m and m. There is an intermediate stage, between the second and third, but it is unused nowadays.

In the 19th and early 20th century, it served as a trans-shipment platform for the passengers going to the top because the elevators were not able to rise so high at one time. The tower is decorated with arcades on the level of the first floor and each floor has different buildings: restaurants, shops, museums, observation galleries, and even, in the winter, an ice rink.

The elevators facilitate the rise of the visitors but it is possible to climb the tower by the staircase up to the 2nd floor. By building a square base tower, the four pillars are focused on the 4 cardinal points.

So there is naturally a North pillar, a West, a South and an East. In order to be more technical, Gustave Eiffel and his engineers had numbered them from 1 to 4, in this order, but nowadays it is a notion that has been lost. The rest of this document is the descriptive text given by Gustave Eiffel in his book, "La tower de m". It is much more precise, rather technical, and of a style of the late nineteenth century which may seem a little heavy at times.

So before going any further, here are some documents that may interest you:. It is divided in height into 4 parts. The lower part, between the floor and the first floor The second floor marks a change in the structure of the tower. From the ground to the second floor, the four pillars are distinct, while from there the pillars merge into a single column rising to the top.

The pillars are made of square boxes superimposed on each other, their sizes varying according to their heights relative to the ground. On the ground precisely, the pillars are supported on masonry bases, themselves deeply anchored in solid foundations.

The pedestals are placed in a square of m of side, forming the grip of the tower on the ground. Beyond the first stage, their inclination becomes variable as well as their width, which gradually decreases to the second stage, where it is only On this second floor, new horizontal beams cross the four uprights; but, above, the mode of construction changes: the outer faces of the uprights join together in pairs, their inner faces disappear, and there is no longer in this upper part of the Tower, but a large single box of truncated quadrangular pyramid whose base, at the height of Arches of 74 meters in diameter develop between the uprights on the lower floor; but their role is purely decorative.

On the first floor, restaurants are located in the spaces between the uprights of the same side; moreover, an outer covered gallery, carried by consoles and having meters of development, goes around the building.

All the space between the uprights and in the interior of them, carries a floor leaving a large central void surrounded by a guardrail. The total surface area of the floors of this floor, net of voids for the passage of the elevators, but including the gallery, is 4, square meters.

The area covered by galleries and restaurants is 2, square meters. The second floor also has an exterior gallery established in the same manner as the first floor, but of a lesser development meters.

The floor extends on this floor on the entire section of the Tower, without central vacuum, and gives an area of square meters. On this floor there was a Prinery, a Figaro press, closed shelters and various kiosks at the end of the 19th century.

It forms a kind of cage glazed by movable mirrors, from which the visitors can, with the shelter of the wind that frequently reigns at these heights, observe the panorama that surrounds them. Immediately above this covered area, there is a terrace that the builder reserved for himself, the center is occupied by scientific laboratories and by a small room used for receptions. Above this central building are placed the cross beams supporting the transmission pulleys of the elevators.

They are surmounted by the four large arches by day supporting the lighthouse of the summit. The small platform of 1. It can be easily accessed by internal ladders, and the lightning-conductor is no longer above itself.

The technical description is based on certain notions of architecture, so you sometimes have definitions that can be displayed independently of the text. These are the links in italics. The texts below are largely inspired by the book 'The Tower of m', written by Gustave Eiffel himself in , but as it is sometimes a rather heavy style obsolete, nowadays , some sentences were taken differently.

And you have an introduction to each part because otherwise it is a bit heavy to read. The technical description begins with the rafters, which are the large curved beams rising from the pedestals, at ground level, at the top. They are the ones who provide the general structure of the Eiffel Tower. The description therefore begins with the connection between the masonry pedestals and the crossbars. As indicated in detail below, the crossbowmen are not directly fixed on the pedestals, the latter have a sabot on which a counter-shoe is fitted, which is fixed to the end of the crossbow.

Between the two, there is room to put a very large hydraulic cylinder.