Alexandre Gustave Eiffel and Eiffel Tower
Its creator, famed engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, is commemorated with a statue located just beneath the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower was the crowning achievement of a corporation founded and contracted by this master engineer that specialised in metal architectural work. Before it, he was in charge of the massive Bordeaux railway bridge in the southwest of France. However, the Eiffel Tower was the crowning achievement of his career in 1889. A graduate of France’s prestigious École Centrale Des Arts et Manufactures, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel is also known for his work on the Statue of Liberty in New York.
The Côte-d’Or is where Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was born. His family adopted the name Eiffel to honour the Eifel Mountains from where they had travelled. Gustave’s legal birth name was Bonickhausen Dit Eiffel, which he changed to Gustave in 1880. The Eiffel Tower was designed by Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin for the 1889 Exposition Universelle as a centrepiece. Eiffel initially showed little interest in the concept, but he eventually approved it and advised Stephen Sauvestre to add architectural details.
The decorative arches were added to the bottom, a glass arcade to the first level, and a cupola to the uppermost half by Sauvestre. Eiffel then bought the design’s patent from Koechlin, Nougier, and Sauvestre. The Eiffel Tower exemplifies contemporary engineering, the Industrial and Scientific Revolution, the 18th-century scientific revolution, and the 1789 revolution, for which France is grateful. On January 8, 1887, Eiffel signed an agreement for 1.5 million francs for the construction costs. Work on the grounds began at the end of January.
The costs were projected to be 6.5 million Swiss francs. Eiffel established a separate corporation to control the tower premises because he planned to collect all commercial income during the exhibition and for the next 20 years. The drawing office produced 1,700 standards and 3,629 complex drawings of the 18,038 parts, resulting in the hiring of 250 workers. Four legs were initially built as cantilevers at a 54° angle from the ground, relying on anchoring bolts in foundation blocks to support them.
It functioned well until they got to the first level, at which point it started to fail. After a brief pause, construction of the metalwork resumed, and the four legs were successfully linked, to each other in March 1888. The foremost structural work was concluded, by the end of March. Officials and members of the media were given exclusive access to the tower’s observation deck on January 31. The elevator wasn’t working at the time, so the climb lasted over an hour, with Eiffel frequently halting to illustrate various aspects of the tower.
The Eiffel Tower had been reduced to the second level by June and was used for a Bastille Day fireworks show. Eiffel’s value as an engineer is twofold. While he was open to new ideas from others, he also pioneered basing engineering decisions on precise calculations of the forces at play. When it came to design and production, he combined his analytical skills with precision. Eiffel Tower is significant because of its part in securing the artistic perspective of compositions whose appearance is ordained by pragmatic tolerances.
