BIOGRAPHY Gustave Eiffel

SYNOPSIS
Gustave Eiffel began specializing in construction with metal after
college, and his first job was mainly focused on the bridges. In 1879,
the head of the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel died engineer was hired to
replace him. In 1882, Eiffel began work on the viaduct Garabit, which
was at that time the highest bridge in the world. Soon he began working
on what would become known as the Eiffel Tower, the structure that
featured his name in history.
EARLY YEARS
Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel was born in Dijon, France, in 1832. Interested
in the building at an early age, he attended the School of Art and
Manufacture in Paris, where he graduated in 1855. After graduation,
Eiffel specialized in constructions metal, especially bridges. The only
work over the coming decades, searching in mathematics find ways to
build lighter, stronger structures.
FIRST PROJECTS
One of the first projects Eiffel occurred in 1858, when he oversaw the
construction of an iron bridge in Bordeaux. By the time he designed the
arched gallery Machines for the Paris Exposition of 1867, his reputation
was solidified. Also in 1876, he designed the "Maria Pia" steel arch
bridge 525 feet (160.02 m) over the Douro river in Porto, Portugal, which
was completed the following year. Working from the same design for 20
years, he built the famous viaduct of 540-feet (164,592 m) Garabit in
Truyre, France.
In 1879 he created the dome of the observatory in Nice, France, notable
in that the dome was mobile. That same year, when the initial resident
engineer

of

the

Statue

of

Liberty,

Eugne

Viollet-le-Duc,

died

unexpectedly, Eiffel was hired as the new engineer. Eiffel created a new
support system for the statue would be based on a skeletal structure
rather than weight to support the copper skin. He and his team built
the statue from the beginning and then dismantled for the trip to the
port of New York.

THE EIFFEL TOWER

Eiffel is most famous for what is known as the Eiffel Tower, which was
initiated in 1887 for the Universal Exhibition of 1889 in Paris. The tower
is composed of 12,000 different components and 2,500,000 rivets, all
designed and assembled to handle the pressure of the wind. The
structure is a marvel in the economy of materials, Eiffel honed in years
of building bridges. Onlookers were amazed that Eiffel could build the
tallest structure in the world (984 feet) in just two years and spoiled by
the unique design of the tower, as ridiculous as horribly modern and
useless. Despite the immediate attraction of the tower as a tourist
attraction, just years later criticism and Parisians they began to see the
structure as a work of art.
The Eiffel Tower also directed interest to the field of aerodynamics, and
the structure used for various experiments and built the first
aerodynamic laboratory in its base. The laboratory includes the first
ever built wind tunnel, and his work influenced some of the first
aviators, including the Wright brothers. He went on to write several
books on aerodynamics, especially air resistance and aviation.
Eiffel turned his interest to meteorology in his later years, studying the
subject in depth before he died on December 27, 1923.