17 Interesting Eiffel Tower Facts - Height | At Night | History

A common Tower of Babel, or Eiffel Tower, nearly 300 million visitors no matter age or origin have come from everywhere on the planet to see it since its opening in 1889.

Eiffel tower facts

Current height: 1063 feet
Original height: 1024 feet
First floor: 187 feet, 14,485 square feet
Second floor: 377 feet, 4,692 square feet
Third floor: 906 feet, 820 square feet
Lifts: 5 lifts from the esplanade to the second floor, 2 x 2 duolifts from the second floor to the top
Weight of the metal frame: 7,300 tons
Total weight: 10,100 tons
Number of rivets used: 2,500,000
Number of iron parts: 18,038
Pillars: The 4 pillars form 410 square feet sideways square

1. Eiffel tower history

Locally nicknamed “La dame de fer” (French for “Iron Lady”), it was constructed from 1887 to 1889 as the doorway to the 1889 World’s Fair and was initially criticized by a few of France’s main artists and intellectuals for its design, nevertheless it has grown to be a world cultural icon of France and probably the most recognizable buildings on the earth. The Eiffel Tower is the most-visited paid monument on the earth; 6.91 million people ascended it in 2015.

As France’s image on the earth, and the showcase of Paris, in the present day it welcomes nearly 7 million visitors a year (around 75% of whom are foreigners), making it probably the most visited monument that it’s important to pay for on the earth.

The tower is 324 meters (1,063 ft) tall, about the identical height as an 81-story construction, and the tallest construction in Paris. Its base is sq., measuring 125 meters (410 ft) on either side

During its building, the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to grow to be the tallest man-made construction on the earth, a title it held for 41 years till the Chrysler Building in New York City was completed in 1930.

It was the first construction on the earth to surpass each the 200 meters and 300-meter mark in height. Due to the addition of a broadcasting aerial on the top of the tower in 1957, it’s now taller than the Chrysler Building by 5.2 meters (17 ft). Excluding transmitters, the Eiffel Tower is the second tallest free-standing construction in France after the Millau Viaduct.

The tower has three ranges for visitors, with eating places on the first and second ranges. The top level’s higher platform is 276 m (906 ft) above the ground – the best statement deck accessible to the general public within the European Union.

Tickets may be bought to ascend by stairs or carry to the first and second ranges. The climb from ground level to the first level is over 300 steps, as is the climb from the first level to the second. Although there’s a staircase to the top level, it’s often accessible solely by carrying.

2. What is unsuitable with the Eiffel Tower?

While we have been in Paris at the finish of May, the EiffelTower elevators have been shut down as a result of the employees have been protesting the dearth of safety in opposition to pickpockets, who apparently have completely infested the elevators. They then swarm the individual in assist of pickpocketing and purse-snatching.

3. Why Eiffel Tower is famous?

For 130 years, the Eiffel Tower has been a strong and distinctive image of the city of Paris, and by extension, of France. At first, when it was constructed for the 1889 World’s Fair, it impressed the complete world by its stature and daring design and symbolized French know-how and industrial genius.

It’s building in 2 years, 2 months, and 5 days was a veritable technical and architectural achievement. “Utopia achieved”, an emblem of technological prowess, on the finish of the 19th Century it was an indication of French engineering personified by Gustave Eiffel, and a defining moment of the commercial period. It was met instantly with great success.

Only supposed to final 20 years, it was saved by the scientific experiments that Eiffel inspired, and particularly by the first radio transmissions, adopted by telecommunications.

For instance, the radio alerts from the Pantheon Tower in 1898; it served as a navy radio put up in 1903; it transmitted the first public radio program in 1925, after which broadcast tv as much as TNT is more just lately.

4. How many people died constructing the Eiffel Tower?

More than 300 within the workshops at Levallois-Perret (North-West suburb of Paris). During its completion, just one employee – an Italian – tragically died by falling from the first ground. The Eiffel Tower was constructed for the 1889 Paris World Fair, marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution.

5. Lifts

The Roux, Combaluzier & Lepape lifts throughout the building. Note the drive sprockets and chain within the foreground.

Equipping the tower with sufficient and secure passenger lifts was a significant concern of the federal government fee overseeing the Exposition. Although some visitors may very well be anticipated to climb to the first level, and even the second, lifts clearly needed to be the primary technique of ascent.

Constructing lifts to succeed in the first level was comparatively simple: the legs have been large sufficient on the backside and so almost straight that they may include a straight monitor, and a contract was given to the French firm Roux, Combaluzier & Lepape for 2 lifts to be fitted within the east and west legs.

Roux, Combaluzier & Lepape used a pair of limitless chains with inflexible, articulated hyperlinks to which the automobile was connected. Lead weights on some hyperlinks of the higher or return sections of the chains counterbalanced a lot of the automobile’s weight.

The automobile was pushed up from under, not pulled up from above: to forestall the chain buckling, it was enclosed in a conduit. At the underside of the run, the chains handed around 3.9 m (12 ft 10 in) diameter sprockets. Smaller sprockets on the top guided the chains.

6. Material

The puddled iron (wrought iron) of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tons, and the addition of lifts, retailers, and antennae have introduced the full weight to roughly 10,100 tons.

As an indication of the economy of design, if the 7,300 tons of metal within the construction have been melted down, it will fill the sq. base, 125 meters (410 ft) on either side, to a depth of solely 6.25 cm (2.46 in) assuming the density of the metal to be 7.8 tons per cubic meter.

Additionally, a cubic field surrounding the tower (324 m x 125 m x 125 m) would include 6,200 tons of air, weighing nearly as a lot because of the iron itself.

Depending on the ambient temperature, the top of the tower might shift away from the solar by as much as 18 cm (7 in) as a consequence of the thermal growth of the metal on the facet dealing with the solar.

7. Wind concerns

When it was constructed, many have been shocked by the tower’s daring type. Eiffel was accused of making an attempt to create one thing creative with no regard to the rules of engineering.

However, Eiffel and his team – skilled bridge builders – understood the significance of wind forces, and knew that in the event that they have been going to construct the tallest construction on the earth, that they had to make certain it might stand up to them. In an interview with the newspaper, Le Temps printed on 14 February 1887, Eiffel mentioned:

Is it not true that the very circumstances which give energy additionally conform to the hidden guidelines of concord? … Now to what phenomenon did I’ve to provide main concern in designing the Tower?

It was wind resistance. Well then! I maintain that the curvature of the monument’s 4 outer edges, which is as mathematical calculation dictated it must be … will give a great impression of energy and wonder, for it’ll divulge to the eyes of the observer the boldness of the design as a complete.

He used graphical strategies to find out the energy of the tower and empirical proof to account for the consequences of wind, fairly than a mathematical formulation. Close examination of the tower reveals a principally exponential form.

All elements of the tower have been over-designed to make sure most resistance to wind forces. The top half was even assumed to haven’t any gaps within the latticework. In the years because it was accomplished, engineers have put ahead varied mathematical hypotheses and try to clarify the success of the design.

The most up-to-date, devised in 2004 after letters despatched by Eiffel to the French Society of Civil Engineers in 1885 have been translated into English, is described as a non-linear integral equation primarily based on counteracting the wind strain on any level of the tower with the stress between the development parts at that time.

The Eiffel Tower sways by as much as 9 cm (3.5 in) within the wind.

8. Passenger lifts

The association of the lifts has been modified a number of instances in the course of the tower’s history. Given the elasticity of the cables and the time taken to align the vehicles with the landings, every lift, in regular service, takes a median of 8 minutes and 50 seconds to do the round journey, spending a median of 1 minute and 15 seconds at every level. The common journey time between ranges is 1 minute.

The authentic hydraulic mechanism is on public display in a small museum on the base of the east and west legs. Because the mechanism requires frequent lubrication and upkeep, public entry is usually restricted. The rope mechanism of the north tower may be seen as visitors exit the lift.

9. Design of the Eiffel Tower

The plan to construct a tower 300 meters high was conceived as a part of preparations for the World’s Fair of 1889.

The wager was to “study the possibility of erecting an iron tower on the Champ-de-Mars with a square base, 125 meters across and 300 meters tall”. Selected from amongst 107 tasks, it was that of Gustave Eiffel, an entrepreneur, Maurice Koechlin, and Emile Nouguier, each engineer, and Stephen Sauvestre, an architect, that was accepted.

Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin, the 2 chief engineers in Eiffel’s firm, had the thought for a really tall tower in June 1884. It was to be designed like a big pylon with 4 columns of latticework girders, separated on the base and coming collectively on the top and joined to one another by more metal girders at regular intervals.

The tower mission was a daring extension of this principle as much as a height of 300 meters – equal to the symbolic determine of 1000 feet. On September 18 1884 Eiffel registered a patent “for a new configuration allowing the construction of metal supports and pylons capable of exceeding a height of 300 meters”.

In order to make the mission more acceptable to public opinion, Nouguier and Koechlin commissioned the architect Stephen Sauvestre to work on the mission’s look.

10. Engraved names

Gustave Eiffel engraved on the tower the names of 72 French scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in recognition of their contributions to the construction of the tower. Eiffel selected this “invocation of science” due to his concern over the artists’ protest.

At the start of the 20th century, the engravings have been painted over, however, they have been restored in 1986–87 by the Société Nouvelle d’exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, an organization working the tower.

The solely non-structural parts are the 4 ornamental grill-work arches, added in Sauvestre’s sketches, which served to make the tower look more substantial and to make a more spectacular entrance to the exposition.

A pop-culture film cliché is that the view from a Parisian window all the time contains the tower. In actuality, since zoning restrictions restrict the height of most buildings in Paris to seven stories, solely a small variety of tall buildings have a transparent view of the tower.

11. Accommodation

When initially constructed, the first level contained three eating places – one French, one Russian, and one Flemish — and an “Anglo-American Bar”. After the exposition closed, the Flemish restaurant was transformed into a 250-seat theatre.

A promenade 2.6-meter (Eight ft 6 in) large ran across the outdoors of the first level. At the top, there have been laboratories for varied experiments, and a small house reserved for Gustave Eiffel to entertain visitors, which is now open to the general public, full with interval decorations and lifelike mannequins of Eiffel and a few of his notable visitors.

In May 2016, a house was created on the first level to accommodate 4 competitors’ winners in the course of the UEFA Euro 2016 soccer match in Paris in June. The house has a kitchen, two bedrooms, a lounge, and views of Paris landmarks together with the Seine, the Sacre Coeur, and the Arc de Triomphe.

12. Maintenance

Maintenance of the tower contains making use of 60 tons of paint every seven years to forestall it from rusting. The tower has been utterly repainted in no less than 19 instances because it was constructed.

Lead paint was nonetheless getting used as just lately as 2001 when the observation was stopped out of concern for the surroundings.

13. Aesthetics

The tower is painted in three shades: lighter on the top, getting progressively darker in direction of the underside to enhance the Parisian sky. It was initially reddish-brown; this modified in 1968 to a bronze color generally known as “Eiffel Tower Brown”.

The Eiffel Tower stands on 4 lattice-girder piers that taper inward and be part of to type a single giant vertical tower. As they curve inward, the piers are related to one another by networks of girders at two ranges that afford viewing platforms for vacationers.

By distinction, the 4 semicircular arches on the tower’s base are purely aesthetic parts that serve no structural performance.

Because of their distinctive form, which was dictated partly by engineering concerns but in addition partly by Eiffel’s creative sense, the piers required elevators to ascend on a curve; the glass-cage machines designed by the Otis Elevator Company of the United States grew to become one of many principal options of the constructing, serving to set up it as one of many world’s premier vacationer sights.

14. Transport

The nearest Paris Métro station is Bir-Hakeim and the closest RER station is Champ de Mars-Tour Eiffel. The tower itself is situated at the intersection of the Quai Branly and the Pont d’Iéna.

15. Popularity

More than 250 million people have visited the tower because it was accomplished in 1889. In 2015, there have been 6.91 million visitors. The tower is the most-visited paid monument on the earth. An average of 25,000 people ascends the tower day-after-day which can lead to long queues.

16. Restaurants

The tower has two eating places: Le 58 Tour Eiffel on the first level, and Le Jules Verne, a connoisseur restaurant with its personal carry on the second level. This restaurant has one star within the Michelin Red Guide.

It was run by the multi-Michelin star chef Alain Ducasse from 2007 to 2017. Starting May 2019, it will likely be managed by three-star chef Frédéric Anton. It owes its name to the well-known science-fiction author Jules Verne. Additionally, there’s a champagne bar on the top of the Eiffel Tower.

From 1937 till 1981, there was a restaurant close to the top of the tower. It was eliminated as a consequence of structural concerns; engineers had decided it was too heavy and was inflicting the tower to sag.

This restaurant was bought by an American restaurateur and transported to New York after which New Orleans. It was rebuilt on the sting of New Orleans’ Garden District as a restaurant and later occasion corridor.

17. Replicas

As probably the most iconic landmarks on the earth, the Eiffel Tower has been the inspiration for the creation of many replicas and comparable towers. An early instance is Blackpool Tower in England.

The mayor of Blackpool, Sir John Bickerstaffe, was so impressed on seeing the Eiffel Tower at the 1889 exposition that he commissioned the same tower to be in-built his city.

It opened in 1894 and is 158.1 m (518 ft) tall. Tokyo Tower in Japan, constructed as a communications tower in 1958, was additionally impressed by the Eiffel Tower.

There are varied scale fashions of the tower within the United States, together with a half-scale model on the Paris Las Vegas, Nevada, one in Paris, Texas in-built 1993, and two 1:3 scale fashions at Kings Island, situated in Mason, Ohio, and Kings Dominion, Virginia, amusement parks opened in 1972 and 1975 respectively.

Two 1:Three scale fashions may be present in China, one in Durango, Mexico that was donated by the native French community, and a number of others throughout Europe.

In 2011, the TV present Pricing the Priceless on the National Geographic Channel speculated {that a} full-size reproduction of the tower would price roughly US$480 million to construct. This can be more than ten instances the price of the unique (almost 8 million in 1890 Francs; ~US$40 million in 2018 {dollars}). Learn more about Mandalay Bay.

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17 Interesting Eiffel Tower Facts – Height | At Night | History | Visit