At that time, the Washington Monument had just been built. This 557-foot-high monument became the tallest building in the world at that time. The French hope to surpass this record and build a 1000 foot tower in the center of Paris. What needs to be done is to find the design and architect of this tower. Before the deadline of 1887 May18, more than 100 design drafts participated in the competition. Most of them are traditional and some are weird. It was proposed to build a huge guillotine; It is planned to erect 1000-foot sprinkler to irrigate the whole Paris in dry season; It is also suggested to install a huge electric light at the top of the tower, which can illuminate the whole Paris for eight times to facilitate reading newspapers.
In fact, none of these suggestions were adopted. When the news of the competition was announced, 53-year-old architectural engineer Alexander gustave eiffel began to consider building a great French building with metal.
53-year-old AlexanderGustaveEiffel was a famous architect in Europe at that time, and he can be found in the list of designers of the most famous buildings in the second half of19th century. Eiffel suggested that the French authorities build an iron tower twice the height of the tallest building in the world at that time-pyramid of khufu, Cologne Cathedral and Ulm Cathedral, and submitted the drawings and calculation results to the General Committee of Expo 1889 in June, 1887, and won the bid on1October 8. 1887 65438+ 10, Eiffel signed contracts with the French government and the Paris municipal government. Eiffel's engineering company will pay $654.38+$300,000 from the total construction budget of $654.38+$600,000. In exchange, Eiffel will get all kinds of income from the tower during the World Expo and in the next 20 years. At this time, the government has agreed to keep the tower after the World Expo. Then, all the ownership will be transferred to the Paris city government, and the government can tear down the tower if it wants.
Unlike other public monuments, the Eiffel Tower was designed to make money from the beginning. If you want to take the elevator or stairs to the first floor platform, you need to pay 2 francs; If you want to go all the way to the top floor, you need to pay 5 francs (it will be cheaper on Sunday). This is just the beginning. The first floor platform also plans to open restaurants, cafes and shops. The second floor platform plans to open a post office, a telephone office, a bakery and a gallery. This tower is designed to accommodate 104 16 paying tourists. 1887 65438+1On October 28th, the construction of the Eiffel Tower officially broke ground. On February 14, elites from Paris' literary and architectural circles took part in a protest against the construction of the Paris Tower. Among them, 300 famous people, including famous French writers Mo Bosang and Dumas, signed their names to protest the construction of the Paris Tower. Protests by celebrities triggered petitions from the masses. This behemoth will cover Notre Dame de Paris, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe and other famous buildings. This ugly column riveted with steel will cast a disgusting shadow on this ancient city with a breath of hundreds of years. At the same time, the tower has other critics. A French math professor predicted that the building would collapse when it reached 748 feet (229 meters). There are also "experts" who say that the light from the tower will kill all the fish in the Seine. The Paris edition of The New York Herald claimed that the tower was changing the climate, while the Morning Post reported in its headline that the tower was "sinking". However, the construction of the tower did not stop for a moment because of these objections, and a feeling of awe began to replace fear.
By answering a series of questions from Times reporters, the architect Eiffel successfully dispelled the doubts of the masses, and the voice of opposition dropped significantly. The Eiffel Tower continued to be built, unaffected by controversy and intimidation. At the beginning of the project, there were actually four construction sites, each of which was a tower leg or pier. These piers will meet after 180 feet. When these piers meet, they must be able to reach a perfect level, which will serve as the foundation for the remaining 800 feet. If the pier is built slightly differently, it will tilt the whole tower.
Eiffel knew that he couldn't guarantee the perfect level of the tower piers after construction, so he installed a temporary hydraulic pump at the bottom of each tower pier. In this way, with the progress of the project, he can make fine adjustments by slightly raising or lowering the tower pier. After the overall adjustment is completed, workers will embed iron wedges in the tower pier to permanently fix the tower pier.
Later it turned out that Eiffel had nothing to worry about. Even if it reaches the height of 180 feet, the maximum error of the four towers is not 2.5 inches. Four piers are simply adjusted and fixed. To this day, the tower is still intact. In the process of building the Eiffel Tower, the architect Eiffel designed many creative technologies:
Unlike other large-scale construction projects at that time, Eiffel made all the components in his workshop in advance. In other words, when these components are sent to the construction site, they can be installed quickly.
● Make rivet holes in advance with a tolerance of one tenth of a millimeter, so that 20 riveting teams can assemble 1650 rivets every day.
● Each part of the tower does not exceed 3 tons, which makes small cranes widely used. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France has become a symbol of France since the completion of 1889. This 324-meter-high building is made up of12,000 metal parts, sharing more than 9,000 tons of steel. The French like romance. They don't call this behemoth a "great hero" or a "gentleman", but affectionately call it the "Iron Lady".
The Iron Lady stands proudly and gracefully, standing in the wind and rain for more than 100 years. Since you are an "iron lady", you have to take a shower and dress up. Paris Iron Lady washed it 1 18 times.
So, how does the Iron Lady take a bath? Due to the complexity of the Eiffel Tower, manual painting has been used so far. Paint itself is made of special materials and has a longer life than other paints. Due to the huge structure of the iron tower, the number of workers should not be too large, generally around 25. Workers first use sandpaper to polish the steel frame, scrape off the aging paint skin and brush the primer.
Subsequently, the workers spread 55 tons of mixed paint on the tower bit by bit, which is an important part of protecting the Eiffel Tower. Workers must paint all parts of the tower: the sunny side, the shady side and the windward side at the top ... The most difficult part is the corner of the tower, and people can only bend over or bend over to work. Although they all have safety ropes and will not be in great danger to their lives, according to the workers, "painting this beautiful iron tower is really an arduous task."
When painting the tower, the tower remains open as usual. Every day, a large number of tourists come to visit, and sometimes paint drops on tourists, and the staff will help remove it. This paint is easy to remove when it is not dry, and it is as strong as a stone when it is dry.
The key to the iron lady's bath is the paint used in the Eiffel Tower. The color of this painting is very unique, consisting of three shades of brown, with dark brown at the bottom and light brown at the top. It has a special name called "Eiffel Tower Brown". Usually, people will only marvel at the tall and majestic spirit of this tower when they visit it, and be impressed by her ingenious creativity. However, few people pay attention to the color of the tower. In fact, the beauty of "Iron Lady" lies not only in her graceful posture, but also in the combination of her own color and light, which makes the tower look more radiant and unforgettable.
Mr. Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, once said when delivering the drawings: "Only suitable paint can guarantee the life of this metal building." This sentence is very suitable for the maintenance of the iron lady. Coating maintenance before 1. 1968
When the Eiffel Tower was first built, it was painted with an oily iron red primer and two layers of linseed oil iron red paint, plus a thick bright red varnish. According to the requirements of the specification, the color of the appearance changes from deep to light from bottom to top.
1892 when repainting for the first time, brush red lead paint after rust removal. After washing and general cleaning, other parts are painted with lead white/yellow brown refined linen paint, which requires a five-year warranty period.
Mr Georges Hartog & repainted at 1899; Co. is a company that produces varnishes and enamels. It provides and spreads two special paints, which are divided into five shades, and change from dark orange to light yellow from bottom to top. The repainting of this maintenance requires a 7-year warranty.
After lead white was banned in the paint, the Eiffel Tower began to use mica iron oxide oily paint in 1907. Due to the war, it was not until 1924 that it was repainted with similar paint again. The same painting work was carried out in 1932, 1939 and 1947. The surface polluted by dust has been brushed clean, and the oil stain has also been cleaned up. Rusted parts are treated with rust hammer and wire brush. Firstly, the rusty part was partially painted, and then the top coat was applied with 35 t paint, which took 40 000 h.
In the maintenance painting of 1954, the rusty parts were first repaired with two layers of linseed oil red lead paint, and then painted with reddish brown linseed oil iron red and lead chromate paint. The same coating system was used in 196 1, the only difference was that part of phenolic resin was added in 15 drying oil.
2. 1968 painting maintenance
Since 1968, the painting project of the Eiffel Tower has started a new stage. The rusty part is repaired with raw linseed oil red lead paint. Top coat is made of drying oil (92% ~ 94%) and alkyd resin (6% ~ 8%).
The warranty period of paint quality is still 7 years, but the proportion of gloss and corrosion is clearly defined, and the Re3 grade specified in the European corrosion specification is used for the first time. Re3 is equivalent to Ri3 of ISO 4628-3, and the corrosion rate is 1%.
In the era of using traditional red lead antirust paint and oily/alkyd topcoat, the quality assurance level of corrosion rate of Re3 is very harsh. Therefore, this maintenance painting project also includes other mandatory requirements, with special emphasis on quality control of surface treatment:
1995 using video system, photos and other tools to assist the anticorrosion control of painting engineering.
3. Spray painting maintenance 200 1 year
After 1 12 years of wind and rain, the Eiffel Tower began its 18 th "beauty" project on February 3, 2006. This new lead-free environmental protection paint provided by Jordan Paint France Company will make the surface of the tower more resistant to corrosion and air pollution, thus extending the period of comprehensive painting of the tower every seven years to every 10 year. However, the oldest part of the tower is from 1 to the third floor, and will still be painted every five years in the future. Prior to this, all the products of the bidding paint company had been tested in the laboratory and outdoors for three years, and finally chose the polyurethane modified alkyd paint Mammut series painted by Jordan. Mammut system is divided into primer and topcoat, which are packaged in one component. It can be applied to 100 micron thick film dry film without sagging, while ordinary alkyd coatings can only be applied to 50μ m dry film ... The coating system also has low flame spread performance and has passed the certification of relevant special testing institutions. Painting the Eiffel Tower is a complicated and difficult project.
Painters working in the air must first spray the surface of the 200,000-square-meter iron tower with a high-pressure water mist spray gun to thoroughly remove bird droppings and other scales; Then, strictly check the condition of the original paint, and knock off and polish the damaged and corroded paint with a hammer and a portable grinding wheel; Then, coat two layers of antirust paint on the tower; Finally, apply 1 brown topcoat. The whole project needs 60 tons of paint and is completed by 25 painters. In order to avoid the inconvenience caused by tourists visiting the tower, a safety net with an area of about 2 hectares was set on the tower. Painters will also wear work clothes of the same color as the tower when they are hung up. The coating system provided is divided into three slightly different color levels, which are painted on different levels of the tower, making it more harmonious and gorgeous. Jordan paint not only provides high-quality coating products, but also sends experienced technicians to guide the construction on site during the whole construction process.