Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (born Bonickhausen dit Eiffel; /ˈaɪfəl/;
French pronunciation: [ɛfɛl]; 15 December 1832 – 27 December 1923) was a
French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale Paris, he made his name
building various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the
Garabit viaduct. He is best known for the world-famous Eiffel Tower, built for
the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, and his contribution to building the
Statue of Liberty in New York. After his retirement from engineering, Eiffel
focused on research into meteorology and aerodynamics, making significant
contributions in both fields.
Early life
Gustave Eiffel was born in Burgundy, France, in the city of
Dijon, Côte-d'Or, the first child of Catherine-Mélanie (née Moneuse) and
Alexandre Bönickhausen (French pronunciation: [bɔnikozɑ̃]). He was a descendant of Jean-René Bönickhausen,
who had emigrated from the German town of Marmagen and settled in Paris at the
beginning of the 18th century. The
family adopted the name Eiffel as a reference to the Eifel Mountains in the
region from which they had come. Although the family always used the name
Eiffel, Gustave's name was registered at birth as Bonickhausen dit Eiffel, and was not officially changed to Eiffel until
1880.
At the time of Gustave's birth, his father, an ex-soldier,
was working as an administrator for the French Army; but shortly after his
birth, his mother expanded a charcoal business, and soon afterwards his father
gave up his job to assist her. Due to his mother's business commitments,
Gustave spent his childhood living with his grandmother, but nevertheless
remained close to his mother, who was to remain an influential figure until her
death in 1878. His father, however, did not play a big part in young Eiffel's
early life. The business was successful enough for Catherine Eiffel to sell it
in 1843 and retire on the proceeds. Eiffel was not a studious child, and thought
his classes at the Lycée Royal in Dijon boring and a waste of time, although in
his last two years, influenced by his teachers for history and literature, he
began to study seriously, and he gained his baccalauréats in humanities and
science. An important part in his
education was played by his uncle, Jean-Baptiste Mollerat, who had invented a
process for distilling vinegar and had a large chemical works near Dijon, and
one of his uncle's friends, the chemist Michel Perret. Both men spent a lot of
time with the young Eiffel, teaching him about everything from chemistry and
mining to theology and philosophy.
Eiffel went on to attend the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris,
to prepare for the difficult entrance exams set by engineering colleges in France,
and qualified for entry to two of the most prestigious schools – École
polytechnique and École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures – and ultimately
entered the latter. During his second
year he chose to specialize in chemistry, and graduated ranking at 13th place
out of 80 candidates in 1855. This is what is thought to be one of the things
that led young Eiffel into his career of engineering. This was the year that
Paris hosted the second World's Fair, and Eiffel was bought a season ticket by
his mother.
Early career
After graduation, Eiffel had hoped to find work in his
uncle's workshop in Dijon, but a family dispute made this impossible. After a
few months working as an unpaid assistant to his brother-in-law, who managed a
foundry, Eiffel approached the railway engineer Charles Nepveu, who gave Eiffel
his first paid job as his private secretary. However, shortly afterwards Nepveu's company
went bankrupt, but Nepveu found Eiffel a job designing a 22 m (72 ft) sheet
iron bridge for the Saint Germaine railway. Some of Nepveu's businesses were
then acquired by the Compagnie Belge de Matériels de Chemin de Fer: Nepveu was
appointed the managing director of the two factories in Paris, and offered Eiffel
a job as head of the research department. In 1857 Nepveu negotiated a contract
to build a railway bridge over the river Garonne at Bordeaux, connecting the
Paris-Bordeaux line to the lines running to Sète and Bayonne, which involved
the construction of a 500 m (1,600 ft) iron girder bridge supported by six
pairs of masonry piers on the river bed. These were constructed with the aid of
compressed air caissons and hydraulic rams, both innovative techniques at the
time. Eiffel was initially given the responsibility of assembling the metalwork
and eventually took over the management of the entire project from Nepveu, who
resigned in March 1860.
Following the completion of the project on schedule Eiffel
was appointed as the principal engineer of the Compagnie Belge. His work had
also gained the attention of several people who were later to give him work,
including Stanislas de la Roche Toulay, who had prepared the design for the
metalwork of the Bordeaux bridge, Jean Baptiste Krantz and Wilhelm Nordling. Further
promotion within the company followed, but the business began to decline, and
in 1865 Eiffel, seeing no future there, resigned and set up as an independent
consulting engineer. He was already working independently on the construction
of two railway stations, at Toulouse and Agen, and in 1866 he was given a
contract to oversee the construction of 33 locomotives for the Egyptian
government, a profitable but undemanding job in the course of which he visited
Egypt, where he visited the Suez Canal which was being constructed by Ferdinand
de Lesseps. At the same time he was employed by Jean-Baptiste Kranz to assist
him in the design of the exhibition hall for the Exposition Universelle which
was to be held in 1867. Eiffel's principal job was to draw up the arch girders
of the Galerie des Machines. In order to carry out this work, Eiffel and Henri
Treca, the director of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, conducted valuable research on the structural
properties of cast iron, definitively establishing the modulus of elasticity
applicable to compound castings.
Eiffel et Cie
At the end of 1866 Eiffel managed to borrow enough money to
set up his own workshops at 48 Rue Fouquet in Levallois-Perret. His first important commission was for two
viaducts for the railway line between Lyon and Bordeaux, and the company also
began undertaking work in other countries, including the church of San Marcos
in Arica, Chile, which was an all-metal prefabricated building, manufactured in
France and shipped to South America in pieces to be assembled on site.
On 6 October 1868 he entered into partnership with Théophile
Seyrig, like Eiffel a graduate of the École Centrale, forming the company
Eiffel et Cie ("Eiffel and Company"). In 1875, Eiffel et Cie were
given two important contracts, one for a new terminus for the line from Vienna
to Budapest and the other for a bridge over the river Douro in Portugal. The station in Budapest was an innovative
design. The usual pattern for building a railway terminus was to conceal the
metal structure behind an elaborate facade:
Eiffel's design for Budapest used the metal structure as the
centerpiece of the building, flanked on either side by conventional stone and
brick-clad structures housing administrative offices.
The Maria Pia Bridge
The bridge over the Douro came about as the result of a
competition held by the Royal Portuguese Railroad Company. The task was a
demanding one: the river was fast-flowing, up to 20 m (66 ft) deep, and had a
bed formed of a deep layer of gravel which made the construction of piers on the
river bed impossible, and so the bridge had to have a central span of 160 m
(520 ft). This was greater than the longest arch span which had been built at
the time. Eiffel's proposal was for a
bridge whose deck was supported by five iron piers, with the abutments of the
pair on the river bank also bearing a central supporting arch. The price quoted
by Eiffel was FF.965,000, far below the nearest competitor and so he was given
the job, although since his company was less experienced than his rivals the Portuguese
authorities appointed a committee to report on Eiffel et Cie's suitability. The
members included Jean-Baptiste Krantz, Henri Dion and Léon Molinos, both of
whom had known Eiffel for a long time: their report was favorable, and Eiffel
got the job. On-site work began in January 1876 and was complete by the end of
October 1877: the bridge was ceremonially opened by King Luis I and Queen Maria
Pia, after whom the bridge was named, on 4 November.
The Exposition Universelle in 1878 firmly established his
reputation as one of the leading engineers of the time. As well as exhibiting
models and drawings of work undertaken by the company, Eiffel was also
responsible for the construction of several of the exhibition buildings. One of these, a pavilion for the Paris Gas
Company, was Eiffel's first collaboration with Stephen Sauvestre, who was later
to become the head of the company's architectural office.
In 1879 the partnership with Seyrig was dissolved, and the
company was renamed the Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel. The same year the company was given the
contract for the Garabit viaduct, a railway bridge near Ruynes en Margeride in
the Cantal département. Like the Douro bridge, the project involved a lengthy
viaduct crossing the river valley as well as the river itself, and Eiffel was
given the job without any process of competitive tendering due to his success
with the bridge over the Douro. To
assist him in the work he took on several people who were to play important
roles in the design and construction of the Eiffel Tower, including Maurice
Koechlin, a young graduate of the Zurich Polytechnikum, who was engaged to
undertake calculations and make drawings, and Émile Nouguier, who had
previously worked for Eiffel on the construction of the Douro bridge.
The same year Eiffel started work on a system of standardized
prefabricated bridges, an idea that was the result of a conversation with the
governor of Cochin-China. These used a small number of standard components, all
small enough to be readily transportable in areas with poor or non-existent
roads, and were joined together using bolts rather than rivets, reducing the
need for skilled labour on site. A number of different types were produced,
ranging from footbridges to standard-gauge railway bridges.
In 1881 Eiffel was contacted by Auguste Bartholdi who was in
need of an engineer to help him to realise the Statue of Liberty. Some work had
already been carried out by Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc, but he had died in 1879.
Eiffel was selected because of his experience with wind stresses. Eiffel
devised a structure consisting of a four-legged pylon to support the copper
sheeting which made up the body of the statue. The entire statue was erected at
the Eiffel works in Paris before being dismantled and shipped to the United
States.
In 1886 Eiffel also designed the dome for the Astronomical
Observatory in Nice. This was the most important building in a complex designed
by Charles Garnier, later among the most prominent critics of the Tower. The
dome, with a diameter of 22.4 m (73 ft), was the largest in the world when
built and used an ingenious bearing device: rather than running on wheels or
rollers, it was supported by a ring-shaped hollow girder floating in a circular
trough containing a solution of magnesium chloride in water. This had been
patented by Eiffel in 1881.
The Eiffel Tower
The design of the Eiffel Tower was originated by Maurice
Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, who had discussed ideas for a centrepiece for the
1889 Exposition Universelle. In May 1884 Koechlin, working at his home, made an
outline drawing of their scheme, described by him as "a great pylon,
consisting of four lattice girders standing apart at the base and coming
together at the top, joined together by metal trusses at regular
intervals". Initially Eiffel showed
little enthusiasm, although he did sanction further study of the project, and
the two engineers then asked Stephen Sauvestre to add architectural
embellishments. Sauvestre added the decorative arches to the base, a glass
pavilion to the first level and the cupola at the top. The enhanced idea gained
Eiffel's support for the project, and he bought the rights to the patent on the
design which Koechlin, Nougier, and Sauvestre had taken out. The design was
exhibited at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in the autumn of 1884, and on 30
March 1885 Eiffel read a paper on the project to the Société des Ingénieurs
Civils. After discussing the technical problems and emphasising the practical
uses of the tower, he finished his talk by saying that the tower would symbolize:
not only the art of
the modern engineer, but also the century of Industry and Science in which we
are living, and for which the way was prepared by the great scientific movement
of the eighteenth century and by the Revolution of 1789, to which this monument
will be built as an expression of France's gratitude.
Little happened until the beginning of 1886, but with the
re-election of Jules Grévy as President and his appointment of Edouard Lockroy
as Minister for Trade decisions began to be made. A budget for the Exposition
was passed and on 1 May Lockroy announced an alteration to the terms of the
open competition which was being held for a centerpiece for the exposition,
which effectively made the choice of Eiffel's design a foregone conclusion: all
entries had to include a study for a 300 m (980 ft) four-sided metal tower on
the Champ de Mars. On 12 May a commission was set up to examine Eiffel's scheme
and its rivals and on 12 June it presented its decision, which was that only
Eiffel's proposal met their requirements. After some debate about the exact
site for the tower, a contract was signed on 8 January 1887. This was signed by
Eiffel acting in his own capacity rather than as the representative of his
company, and granted him one and a half million francs toward the construction
costs. This was less than a quarter of the estimated cost of six and a half
million francs. Eiffel was to receive all income from the commercial exploitation
during the exhibition and for the following twenty years. Eiffel later established a separate company to
manage the tower.
The tower had been a subject of some controversy, attracting
criticism both from those who did not believe it feasible and from those who
objected on artistic grounds. Just as work began at the Champ de Mars, the
"Committee of Three Hundred" (one member for each metre of the
tower's height) was formed, led by Charles Garnier and including some of the
most important figures of the French arts establishment, including Adolphe
Bouguereau, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet: a petition
was sent to Jean-Charles Alphand, the Minister of Works, and was published by
Le Temps.
To bring our arguments
home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a
gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the
Tour de Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de
Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream.
And for twenty years ... we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful
shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal.
Eiffel responded to such criticism by comparing his tower to
the Egyptian pyramids:
Do you think it is for
their artistic value that the pyramids have so powerfully struck the
imagination of men? What are they, after all, but artificial mountains? [The
aesthetic impact of the pyramids was found in] the immensity of the effort and
the grandeur of the result. My tower will be the highest structure that has
ever been built by men. Why should that which is admirable in Egypt become hideous
and ridiculous in Paris?
Work on the foundations started on 28 January 1887. Those
for the east and south legs were straightforward, each leg resting on four 2 m
(6.6 ft) concrete slabs, one for each of the principal girders of each leg but
the other two, being closer to the river Seine were more complicated: each slab
needed two piles installed by using compressed-air caissons 15 m (49 ft) long
and 6 m (20 ft) in diameter driven to a depth of 22 m (72 ft)[27] to support
the concrete slabs, which were 6 m (20 ft) thick. Each of these slabs supported
a limestone block, each with an inclined top to bear the supporting shoe for
the ironwork. These shoes were anchored by bolts 10 cm (4 in) in diameter and
7.5 m (25 ft) long. Work on the foundations was complete by 30 June and the
erection of the iron work was started. Although no more than 250 men were
employed on the site, a prodigious amount of exacting preparatory work was
entailed: the drawing office produced 1,700 general drawings and 3,629 detail
drawings of the 18,038 different parts needed. The task of drawing the components was
complicated by the complex angles involved in the design and the degree of
precision required: the positions of rivet holes were specified to within 1 mm
(0.04 in) and angles worked out to one second of arc. The components, some
already riveted together into sub-assemblies, were first bolted together, the
bolts being replaced by rivets as construction progressed. No drilling or
shaping was done on site: if any part did not fit it was sent back to the
factory for alteration. The four legs, each at an angle of 54° to the ground,
were initially constructed as cantilevers, relying on the anchoring bolts in
the masonry foundation blocks. Eiffel had calculated that this would be
satisfactory until they approached halfway to the first level: accordingly work
was stopped for the purpose of erecting a wooden supporting scaffold. This gave
ammunition to his critics, and lurid headlines including "Eiffel
Suicide!" and "Gustave Eiffel has gone mad: he has been confined in
an Asylum" appeared in the popular press. At this stage a small
"creeper" crane was installed in each leg, designed to move up the
tower as construction progressed and making use of the guides for the elevators
which were to be fitted in each leg. After this brief pause erection of the
metalwork continued, and the critical operation of linking the four legs was
successfully completed by March 1888. In order to precisely align the legs so
that the connecting girders could be put into place, a provision had been made
to enable precise adjustments by placing hydraulic jacks in the footings for
each of the girders making up the legs.
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