Revolutionary concept
1885, French officials began to plan to hold a big exposition in 1889 to celebrate the victory of the French revolution 100 anniversary. They hope to build a monument that can represent the honor of France.
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. Now, what needs to be done is to find the design and architect of this tower.
Open choice
1886 On May 2nd, the French government announced a design competition, inviting French engineers and architects to participate in the study of the possibility of erecting an iron tower with a base of125m2 and a height of 300m in Champ de Mars.
No matter what ideas participants put forward, their designs must meet the following two conditions:
1. This building can be used to raise funds. In other words, it must be able to attract enough tourists to buy tickets and the funds obtained can maintain the building itself.
This is a temporary building, which can be easily demolished after the World Expo.
No competition
Before the May 18 deadline, more than 100 design drafts participated in the competition. Most of them are traditional, and the other one
Some are very strange. 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.
A few weeks ago, he met a French minister named Edouard Lockroy and submitted a plan he had prepared-an iron tower. Eiffel produced 5329 mechanical drawings to describe 18038 different parts to be used. Rockroy was fascinated by the design of Eiffel. He secretly manipulated the design contest to win the design of Eiffel.
Joint venture construction
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.
Break the earth
654381October 26th, and time is running out. With only two years left before the opening of the World Expo, Eiffel must build at a faster pace. You know, the Washington Monument, half the height of the Eiffel Tower, took 36 years to build.
A wave of protests in Paris
A 65,438+0,000-foot-tall building will lower the sky in Paris and crush all other landmarks in Paris, such as Notre Dame, Louvre and Arc de Triomphe ... Ah ... When the tower started to break ground, more than 300 famous Parisians signed a petition to stop the project. They claimed that Eiffel's candlestick would damage the reputation and image of Paris. However, Eiffel and the municipal government ignored this protest, and the construction work continued unaffected.
Other fears
There are other critics of this tower. A French math professor predicted that the building would collapse when it reached 748 feet. 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 never stopped, and a feeling of awe began to replace fear.
The miracle of Eiffel Tower
Generally speaking, buildings are upgraded on the basis of previous works. For example, if you want to build a building with 10 floors, you'd better study the eighth and ninth floors first. For Eiffel, it is not so lucky. No building can reach the height of this tower before.
In order to complete the construction of the tower, 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.
Tatun
At the beginning of the project, there were actually four construction sites, each of which was a tower leg or pier. These towers
These piers will not intersect until after 180 feet. When these piers intersect, 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.
End of movement
The Eiffel Tower is a miracle, not only because of its unique design, but also because its construction speed is faster than expected and its cost is less than expected. The World Expo is scheduled to start on May 6th, and the tower will be completed on March 3rd1.
Eiffel and his company made money back at a record rate. During the first half of the World Expo, the tower made a profit of $6,543,800+0.4 million, while the initial estimated cost was only $6,543,800+0.6 million. Together with the government subsidy of $300,000, the investment was fully recovered before the end of the World Expo. This tower is very spectacular and has been appreciated by many original critics. Among them was the then French Prime Minister Tilard, who initially opposed the project, but after the project ended, he awarded the Legion of Honor to Eiffel. This tower has become a symbol of the highest technology in France and also a symbol of France.
Of course, not everyone will change their attitude. Guy de Maupassant (Mo Bosang), a novelist who is famous for The Necklace, is said to often eat on the second floor of the tower. His reason is that this is the only place where the tower cannot be seen. And in Mo Bosang's novels, many characters don't like this tower.
The facts about this tower
Every seven years, the Eiffel Tower is painted with 300 tons of red and green paint. It is red and green because it has the least impact on the blue sky and the green space of Ares Square under the tower.
The four piers of the tower point to the southeast and northwest.
1925, the Paris municipal government planned to decorate the iron tower with electric lights as part of an art fair held nearby, but it gave up because the cost was as high as 500,000 dollars. When the car manufacturer Andre Citroen. N (Citroen) is going to sponsor this project after learning about this plan, but the condition is that the logo of its car company is formed by lighting. Finally, the two sides reached an agreement.
Unfortunately, the Eiffel Tower has also become the most famous suicide site in France. Every year, an average of four people jump off the tower or hang themselves with beams. The first person who jumped off the tower was a tailor named Reichelt. He sewed himself a bat wing dress. He thought he could fly, but unfortunately, he didn't succeed.
Edit paragraph 3 observation deck
The French say that the Eiffel Tower is the "watchtower of the capital", which is true. It has three watchtowers: up, middle and down.
Taiwan Province can accommodate tens of thousands of people at the same time. The three observation platforms have different views and bring different interests. For a century, about 3 million people have climbed to the top of the tower every year to overlook the city of Paris.
The top observation deck is 274 meters from the ground. If you go up the steps of 1652, it will take almost an hour. Of course, you can also climb by elevator. This is the best place to see from a distance. It will make people feel that the noisy Paris suddenly quieted down and turned into a huge map, with countless lines of different widths drawn from all the streets. The whole Paris is at your feet. When you have a clear vision during the day, you can expect to be 60 kilometers away.
The middle observation deck is 1 15m from the ground. Some people say that you can see the best scenery from this floor. Indeed, the pale yellow Arc de Triomphe Tower, the Louvre in the shade and the white Sacred Heart Church in Montmartre are all clearly visible and colorful. When you climb the tower in the evening, you will see the night is picturesque, the lights are like brocade and the trees are shaded. Those street lamps interwoven into a net are really like beads after rain, with crystal particles. There is also a well-decorated panoramic restaurant on this floor, which is full of customers all year round. Seats must be reserved in advance.
The observation deck on the ground floor is the largest and quite spacious, with various service facilities such as conference hall, movie hall, restaurant, shop and post office. In the shuttle crowd, it seems to be in a downtown area, forgetting that it is 57 meters high after all. It is ideal to watch close-ups from here. Charlotte Palace in the north and its splashing fountains, the Seine River flowing quietly at the foot of the tower, the Aristink lawn in the south and the ancient buildings of the French military academy constitute an unforgettable landscape.
Edit this world opinion
Like all innovative buildings in Paris, the Eiffel Tower has been ignored and rejected by most Parisians from the beginning, not to mention the sharp criticism from architectural and urban planning experts. Although Eiffel, the designer of the tower, declared that "France will be the only country in the world to fly the national flag at a height of 300 meters", it was impossible to persuade people from all walks of life to oppose the tower.
The Times even published an appeal signed by 300 people against Eiffel's design scheme, arguing that the pagoda would completely destroy the artistic style of Parisian architecture, including Mo Bosang and Dumas. Even after the tower was built, the voice of criticism never stopped. Gagniere asked the government to dismantle it; Wei Erlun, a famous French poet and a representative figure of symbolism, immediately chose another route every time he passed the tower to avoid seeing its "ugly" image. For a time, the storm triggered by the Eiffel Tower swept the whole city of Paris.
It was only because of the great contribution of the iron tower to radio communication in World War I that the opposition gradually subsided. Since then, the Eiffel Tower has a formal position in Paris, and it has been gradually accepted and loved, and finally justified on the painters' canvases. Utry Rowe, the only son of Valadon, a famous landscape painter, was described heartily by the original painters Henry and Rousseau, and praised by Pohlner, a French surrealist poet.
An engineer who never thought of taking art as the starting point created the greatest works of art in contemporary times; It is indeed a great irony that a monumental iron tower was not built for a broadcasting launch pad, but was recognized by people because it played the role of a launch pad.
An amazing move to edit this paragraph
1. 189 1 year, a baker in Paris walked 636 steps on stilts and climbed to the top of the tower.
2. 19 1 1 year, a French tailor named Monsier Rayfield flew down from his daughter's wall at the top of the tower. He wore a cloak in the shape of a bat's wing designed by himself, and it had springs on it. Unfortunately, his self-made "Cape Expedition" lost control during the flight, and he flew to death hell in front of a large audience. He hit the ground with great force and opened a big hole 30 cm deep. Later, the doctor examined his body. The doctor said that Rayfield might have died of a heart attack before landing.
3. 1923 In June, a French writer named Pierre Labric rode his bicycle from the top of the second floor to the ground along the tower.
4.1926165438+1October, in order to leave a good impression on his brother who lives nearby, a Frenchman named Leon Kolo tried to fly through the gap between the two towers. He almost succeeded, but at the last minute, he was blinded by the sun. So he had to turn left and hit a radio antenna. The plane caught fire immediately and Leon was killed.
In World War II, just before the Allies were about to recapture Paris from the Germans, an American pilot made the same flying feat as Lyon, and this time he succeeded.
As part of the celebration of the tower's 75th birthday, a mountaineering team climbed the tower-they didn't use any ladders!
7. 1968 A cow was hoisted to the top of the tower to encourage people to buy more dairy products such as milk, butter and cheese.
8. Every year, this tower has to complete its own feat-rising automatically. Because in hot summer, due to thermal expansion, the tower will automatically rise by about17 cm-but when the weather gets cold, the tower will automatically shrink to the normal level.