An extraordinary engineer and renowned scientist, Gustave Eiffel, who died 100 years ago, is forever associated with his famous Parisian iron tower, one of the most famous monuments in the world.
We also owe to this captain of industry, a true “start-upper” before his time, a vast architectural heritage, with hundreds of constructions on all continents (many bridges but also stations, lighthouses, etc.) , and inventions in the fields of meteorology and aerodynamics. So many innovations which pushed his descendants to submit a request for pantheonization of their illustrious ancestor.
Also read: Gustave Eiffel has more than one trick up his sleeve
Here are five things to (re)discover about Gustave Eiffel:
Built in 1889 for the Paris Universal Exhibition, the Eiffel Tower, which quickly became the symbol of France, could have had more Germanic overtones…
Of German origin, Gustave was born in 1832 in Dijon under the name “Bonickhausen dit Eiffel”. After the war of 1870 against Prussia, the inventor will get rid of this surname “likely to harm (him)”. Gustave definitively became Eiffel and gave this name to his tower…
So what would the trained chemist have invented if he hadn’t been diverted into metallurgy by a family quarrel? The revolutionary techniques he implemented did not suffer from his failure at the Polytechnique oral exam either! Cantilever assembly, foundations of bridge piers with compressed air, piece by piece design in its workshops in Levallois-Perret, near Paris, metal structures assembled by rivets…
Eiffel’s creations are technical feats and innovations as well as aesthetic successes. It is thus his decisive intervention on the framework of the Statue of Liberty which makes Bartholdi’s work technically viable.
The construction of the Pest station (Hungary), the first to have an exposed metal facade, definitively established its reputation. In the four corners of the world, we order from Eiffel. Dozens and dozens of famous works (the Porto bridge over the Douro and the Garabit viaduct, which echo each other, the dome of the Nice observatory…) or less known: lighthouses in Madagascar, a Peruvian cathedral, the frame of the Saigon post office, “portable” bridges sold in kits…
The highlight of course remains ITS Eiffel Tower. A gigantic mechanic assembled in record time (and which initially had to be dismantled!) and decried by intellectuals, it then became the tallest monument in the world (300 meters) and will remain so for 40 years.
Never short of ideas, Eiffel launched a new pharaonic project in 1890: a bridge under the Channel! He filed a patent for an underwater tubular bridge system with resistant metal walls with an interior concrete envelope, placed on support points resting on the seabed…
This project will ultimately never see the light of day, for reasons at least as much political as technical. But it foreshadows what will become 104 years later the famous Eurotunnel, whose total length is equivalent to… 169 Eiffel Towers placed end to end.
Shattered by the Panama Canal scandal for which he designed giant locks – his honor will be cleansed by justice – Gustave Eiffel, deeply injured, retires from business. To devote himself until his death to scientific and experimental research. In meteorology and aerodynamics in particular.
At the top of the Eiffel Tower, he installed a weather observatory then a permanent TSF transmitter. And he, who has studied the force of the winds a lot for his constructions, will work a lot on the wind tunnels. He created one in Auteuil in the 16th arrondissement (still in operation!) which includes an area vein two meters in diameter that can reach a speed of 30 m per second.
This type of wind tunnel, which will be copied and reproduced throughout the world, will make it possible to carry out aerodynamic tests in a wide variety of fields: aeronautics, automobiles, construction, shipbuilding, thermal power plants, bridges, etc.
