RIDICULE TO HONOUR

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 82, 3 October 1929, Page 25

RIDICULE TO HONOUR

EIFFEL TOWER'S BTJILDEE

HIS 1000 YEARS PROPHECY

A monument was dedicated in Paris recently to .the memory of Alexandra Gustave Eiffel, whose spectacular tower was a feature of the Paris World's Fair of 1889 (writes Diana Rice in the "New York Times"). The memorial has been placed near the north pillar of the slender shaft that rises 984 feet above the Champ de Mars district on the left bank of the Seine, a shaft still pointed out to.visitors as one of the world's greatest engineering achievements.

"My tower will stand a thousand years," said Gustave Eiffel shortly before he died at the age of 91. Most travellers stopping over in.Paris make at least one journey to the famous lookout, with its sky chamber 900 ft in the air, where the distinguished engineer lived and worked almost to the' day of his death. There, he pursued his meteorological observations, and there be wrote1 his:'book, "Resistance 'of the Air," which was translated into English and hailed as the most important contribution on the subject since the researches af S. P. Langley were published at Washington in 1891. ' Eiffel had four children, but the child always nearest Ms heart was the tower. He watched over it, brooded over it, grieving when rust threatened its 2,500,00,0; rivets,and rejoicing when a new preparation checked the. danger. "Its-only enemy is rust, ana we are taking all precautions against it," he said to a group pi American engineers who lunched with; Mih. in his aerial apartment two years" before he died. The field is open,'he declared, for an inventor who can produce a real protection that ]Kill .be unaffected by wind, water, or summer heat. On that occasion the old scientist' talked of his tower, ..which hadJjeen the subject of so many jests fifty years earlier. "For only" 8,000,000 francs/ in twenty-five.months, modern engineering put np'a-structure- weighing 15,000,000 pounds. There are 15,000 separate pieces in the tower, held together by 2,500,000 rivets..-;.; The greatest care must be given to those joints." And to the last\ thei.engineer continued to experiment with anti-rust paints and similar preparations to save ?'those joints" that once^ had cost him the world's ridicule.' ' '•• "' •' : ■ ■■■ I .■;■:'■ A liOVe'oF FRESH AIR. It was also on the day he was showing his sky chamber and laboratory to the American engineers that Eiffel deelaredhe had found the secret of Ion"----life'i':.lt..:was, ho asserted, fresh air!' The home he • had made himself atop the tower—rthe'home that winds swayed perceptibly—provided the best air, and that,- he- said, had been largely instrumenta^.in preserving his health. Gustave Eiffel was born and grew up in Dijpn ; . in, Eastern France. He was educated largely at the colleges of Dijon ana ".of Saint-Barbe. He later was graduated from the Central School of Arts an'cLManufaetures in Paris. Before he was fully grown 'he 'developed a genius for constructive engineering. He Studied ana experimented, draftea the briages he hopea one day to build, and applied himself to problems of engineering.. At 23 he went to work for the Western Railway of Sauce, but at the end of three years l'esignecl to devote himself to metallic construction. Eiffel was only 26 when he built the iron bridge ..across the Garonne, at Bordeaux. The" bridge was built after his •own design, and some of his methods employed were new to the bridge engineers of those days. In 1858 sinking cylinders by compressed air had not become the usual procedure it is to-day. Other innovations brought Eiffel into prominence, and his reputation as a bridge, builder spread boyona his own country. 'Ho was summoned to Portugal to bridge the Douro; his activities took him to Austria and Italy. He designed the revolving dome of the Nice Conservatory, ana buiit the Garabit Viaduct in Central France. When Bartholdi evolved for the port of Now York his statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, it was Eiffel who constructed for him the iuterior framework which supported the shell of the figure. At that-time Eiffel was already planning his tower, and he later em-

ployed the same principle in its iron lattice-work that he had used in the Liberty supports. DIIRISION OF EDITORS. Eiffel started his famous tower on 28th January, 1887, and finished it on 13th March, 1889. During its construction he was the, subject of constant riaicule. Paris newspapers declared ■ the tower would;"never;be finished; that it would topple; that a- terrible catastrophe would follow its dedication. Parodies and cartoons appeared by the hundreas. But Eiffel went on with his building. Money appropriated by the French Government gave out when the shaft was only one-quarter finishea, ana Eiffel supplied the rest out of his own pocket. On two ana one-half acres of lana the engineer sunk his four piers oL masonry fifty feet deep. From sixty-four huge uprights he carried the framework up at an angle of about 54 degrees and united it with a single lattice-work shaft. Two hundrea feet above the ground is the first platform, reached by means of elevators, and 700 feet higher up is another platform, large enough for 800 persons. It was up above this last platform that Eiffel built his sky chamber.. The view from the tower is one of the sights of Paris. When the tower was lighted for the first.time, on the opening; night of the 1889 Exposition, distant villagers were alarmed by the three-coloured ,Btar that twinkled so high in the sky. During the war the tower, closed to visitors, was used by the French Government as a look-put post. : it has long been one of the.most important wireless stations in the woria. In the tower was establishea a->labo-ratory in aeroayhamics, to which Eiffel devoted, his later years, ana in which he achieved ' scientific results of great value. As 'the 'engineer grew older, he left his tower-home less frequently, believing that he found in its pure air and superb view what he couia not find elsewhere. Eiffel lived to welcome in his shaftlike eaifice some of the, scientists and engineers who said he would fail if he attempted to build a structure 984 feet high. Ho not only aemonstrated that he could buila one, but that it Vwouia permanently withstand the strongest winds, ana to prove his faith he establishea living quarters in the room that swayed when high winds blew. " '..,-'