Archival photographs detailing the making of the Eiffel Tower.

Inspirational, a poetic marvel and unquestionably the most beautiful and beloved tower in the world, the Eiffel Tower is an engineering and architectural masterpiece and the iconic symbol of Paris and of France..

Today tour Eiffel welcomes 7 million visitors a year, making it the most visited monument in the world. Over 300 million visitors have come from all over the world to see the Eiffel Tower since its opening in 1889.

"A thick cloud of tar and coal smoke seized the throat, and we were deafened by the din of metal screaming beneath the hammer. Over there they were still working on the bolts: workmen with their iron bludgeons, perched on a ledge just a few centimetres wide, took turns at striking the bolts (these in fact were the rivets). One could have taken them for blacksmiths contentedly beating out a rhythm on an anvil in some village forge, except that these smiths were not striking up and down vertically, but horizontally, and as with each blow came a shower of sparks, these black figures, appearing larger than life against the background of the open sky, looked as if they were reaping lightning bolts in the clouds." ~ Emile Goudeau describes the spectacle visiting the construction site at the beginning of 1889.

All the elements were prepared in Eiffel’s factory located at Levallois-Perret on the outskirts of Paris. Each of the 18,000 pieces used to construct the Tower were specifically designed and calculated, traced out to an accuracy of a tenth of a millimetre and then put together forming new pieces around five metres each. A team of constructors, who had worked on the great metal viaduct projects, were responsible for the 150 to 300 workers on site assembling this gigantic erector set.

The uprights rest on concrete foundations installed a few metres below ground-level on top of a layer of compacted gravel. Each corner edge rests on its own supporting block, applying to it a pressure of 3 to 4 kilograms per square centimeter, and each block is joined to the others by walls.

On the Seine side of the construction, the builders used watertight metal caissons and injected compressed air, so that they were able to work below the level of the water.

Its history is interesting, the construction lasted 2 years, 2 months and 5 days and was a veritable technical and architectural achievement. "Utopia achieved", a symbol of technological prowess, at the end of the 19th Century it was a demonstration of French engineering personified by Gustave Eiffel, and a defining moment of the industrial era.

Photographers: Louis Emile Durandelle; Henri Riviere; Freres Neurdein; Hyacinthe Cesar Delmaet; Theophile Feau; Roger Viollet.

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video: Stephen Smith
music: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
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