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We, the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris, do protest with all our vigour and all our indignation, in the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower.... This is the first sentence of a letter of protest written by such famous French people as Alexandre Dumas Jr, Charles Gounod, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle, Guy de Maupassant, Sully Prudhomme, Paul Verlaine, to Mr Alphand, one of the directors of the 1889 World Fair after the engineer Gustave Eiffel had launched the construction of the tower on the Champ de Mars in the west of Paris on January 28, 1887.
Building such a high tower for that period was not Gustave Eiffel's idea.
One day in 1882, Maurice Koechlin, chief of the Research Unit of the Eiffel Company, and his colleague Emile Nouguier conceived the idea of a metal tower for the 1889 World Fair which was to be held in Paris. The first draft by Koechlin was dated June 6, 1884. Koechlin (1856-1946) and Nouguier submitted the draft to Gustave Eiffel who said he did not want to be involved, but let his two engineers continue developing plans for such a tower. With the help of the architect Sauvestre and the sculptor Bartholdi, the two men submitted their project to the General Commissioner of the
Decorative Arts Exhibition who agreed to display a drawing of the tower in Autumn 1884.
At that time, Gustave Eiffel decided to join the project. In September 1884, he registered a patent for a new design for building metal pylons to a height of more than 300m and in December, signed an agreement with his two engineers. Nouguier and Koechlin gave up the exclusive ownership of the
patent to Eiffel who, in return, took care of the expenses of the patent and undertook to pay to each engineer a bonus of 1% on all the amountswhich would be paid to him for the construction of the tower if the project was accepted. He also committed himself to quote the names of both engineers
each time the project or the patent was mentioned (this last promise was never kept).
For years, some fifty engineers and draughtsmen prepared 5,300 drawings and plans for the 18,038 pieces of the tower: according to the calculations,10,416 persons would be able to visit the three platforms at the one time. All the plans still exist: in case of a cataclysm, it would be very easy to
rebuild. Its total weight was 9,700 tonnes of which 7,300 for the metal parts. On June 12, 1886 the project received equal first prize in a competition organised by Mr Lockroy, the then Minister for Industry and Trade: 17 other projects out of 700 were also rewarded. An agreement for the
construction of the tower was signed on January 8, 1887.
On January 26, 1887, the excavation began: 31,000 cubic metres of earth were removed and 12,500 cubic metres of masonry were cast. Each step in the construction brought new difficulties or problems. The first problem came from the clay of the Champ de Mars which could not withstand a pressure of 3 or 4 kg per square centimetre and secondly, workmen discovered that the piles for the northern and eastern feet of the tower had to be driven into an ancient arm of the river Seine. Eiffel, who had experience in building bridges in river beds such as the Maria Pia Bridge which he built on the Douro in Portugal, used metal caissons driven in by compressed air. The masonry 14 metres below ground level, used the hardest stone of the Parisian region: it goes right down to the bedrock under the river Seine.
The earthworks were finished on June 30, 1887 and the day after, the assembly of the metal parts began. The tower was not fully fixed in the masonry but lodged in cast-iron tubes where it could be adjusted, because Gustave Eiffel wanted to avoid any error in calculation. One hundred etalworkers prepared the 18,038 pieces in the Eiffel workshops in Levallois and drilled up to 8,000,000 holes for the 2,500,000 rivets of which 1,056,846 were subsequently fixed by the 132 assemblers on the site. For the platforms, 620 iron sheets were fixed with 55,000 rivets.
On March 26, 1888, the first floor level was finished, 57.63 metresb above the Champ de Mars. The sixteen hydraulic jacks with a power of 800 tonnes each were then removed after the first platform was set exactly level. Eiffel then installed a canteen for his workers on the first floor, where the prices were half those asked by the surrounding marchands devin (the cheap fast-food of the time).
On June 12 the second floor level was reached 115.73 metres above ground.At the same time, the painting of the tower began. The second floor was finished on August 14, 1888. In February 1889, the third level was reached, 276.13 metres above ground-level: there was still the top section to
complete. Eiffel committed himself to finish the tower before the inauguration of the World Fair on May 6, 1889, one day after the centenary of the opening of the Etats Généraux in 1789. Many were hoping that Eiffel could not keep his promise but the construction was finished on March 30, two years and two months after it began. At that time the height of the tower reached 312.27 metres. The day after, Eiffel organised what he called the fête intime du chantier: members of the City Council of Paris,the General Council of the Seine epartment and the Parliament were invite to climb the 1,792 steps with Gustave Eiffel! - the lifts were inaugurated two months later. Only twenty or so reached the summit and attended the hoisting by Eiffel of a giant French flag bearing the letters R.F. The then Prime Minister, Charles Floquet, 62 years old, stopped at the first platform and asked the Minister for Industry and Trade to continue the climb to present Eiffel with the Légion d'Honneur at the top of the tower. Remarkably there were no accidents during the construction of the tower.
Some time later the Société de la Tour Eiffel, half of the shares of which belonged to Gustave Eiffel, signed an agreement with the Prefect Poubelle* for the commercial operation of the tower for the next twenty years to 1910, when it should be returned to the City of Paris.
The problem of taking the visitors up the tower was one of the most difficult met by Gustave Eiffel. Lifts were still new technology of that time and the pylons were inclined at 54° from the ground to the first floor, and inclined at 80° between the first and second floors. Firstly, two Roux-Combaluzier hydraulic lifts were installed in the Eastern and Western feet. They were fast for the time, reaching the first floor in only one minute. In 1900, they were replaced by larger lifts built by the French
company Fives-Lille with a capacity of 86 persons and 8 trips up and back per hour. They still exist. The power station was built under the southern foot. This is a very interesting part of the tower of which most of the visitors are unaware. In 1965, an electric lift was installed in the northern foot with a capacity of 106 persons and 12 trips up and back per hour.
The total cost of the construction reached 8,000,000 gold francs (of which 900,000 was for the foundations, masonry and bases; 3,800,000 for the metal and assembly; 200,000 for the painting; 1,200,000 for the machinery and lifts; 400,000 for decoration, restaurants). The Société de la Tour Eiffel had a capital of 5,100,000 gold francs but there was no issue of public bonds. A private loan was fully reimbursed with the receipts of the first year of operation!
The tower was opened to the public on May 15, 1889 and by the closure of the World Fair on the 5th of November 1889, 1,968,287 persons had visited it. By the 31st of December, the receipts reached 5,919,884 gold francs,that is around 3/4 of the total cost of the construction! At that stage the tower
was illuminated with 22,000 gas burners.
epinzon@udistrital.edu.co
