Wonders of the World as Seen and Described by Great WritersThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912. Excerpt: ... THE EIFFEL TOWER G. EIFFEL HE notion of a tower 1,000 feet in height is not new. A It has haunted the imagination of Englishmen and Americans. As early as 1833, the celebrated English engineer Trevitick proposed to construct a cast iron tower 1,000 feet high, of which the diameter should be 100 feet at the base and four feet at the summit. But his project was never put into execution, and was but imperfectly worked out, even on paper. At the time of the Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, the great American engineers, Messrs. Clarke and Reeves, brought forward a new project. Their tower was to consist of an iron cylinder nine metres in diameter as nucleus, and supported by a series of metal buttresses disposed round it, and starting from a base with a diameter of forty-five metres. This was a distinct improvement on the English project, although it still left room for criticism; and yet the Americans, in spite of their enterprising spirit and the national enthusiasm excited by this conception, shrank from its execution. In 1881, M. Sebillot proposed to light Paris by an electric lamp placed at a height of 1,000 feet. This idea, which has, in my opinion, no practical value, had no better fate than its predecessors. I need only mention the designs, some in masonry, some in metal-work and masonry combined, others, lastly, in wood, like the proposed tower for the Brussels Exhibition, which were produced at the same time as my own. But all these remained in the domain of fancy, proposals easy to frame but hard to execute. I come to the project which has been realized. In 1885, after the studies which my engineers and I had occasion to make with regard to the lofty metal piers which support railway viaducts like that of Garabit, we were led to believe that it w... |
