Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is an iron tower built on the Champ de Mars beside the River Seine in Paris. The tower has become a global icon of France and is one of the most recognizable structures in the world.

The Parisian landmark is the tallest structure in Paris and one of the most recognized structures in the world and is named after its designer, engineer Gustave Eiffel. 6,719,200 people visited the tower in 2006 and more than 200,000,000 since its construction. This makes the tower the most visited paid monument in the world per year. Including the 24 m (79 ft) antenna, the structure is 324 m (1,063 ft) high (since 2000), which is equivalent to about 81 levels in a conventional building.

When the tower was completed in 1889 it replaced the Washington Monument as the world’s tallest structure a title it retained until 1930 when New York City’s Chrysler Building (319 m 1,047 ft tall) was completed. The tower is now the fifth-tallest structure in France and the tallest structure in Paris, with the second-tallest being the Tour Montparnasse (210 m 689 ft), although that will soon be surpassed by Tour AXA (225.11 m 738.36 ft).

The structure of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tons. Depending on the ambient temperature the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to 18 cm (7 in) due to thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun. The tower also sways 6-7 cm (2-3 in) in the wind.

The first and second levels are accessible by stairs and lifts. A ticket booth at the south tower base sells tickets to use the stairs which begin at that location. At the first platform the stairs continue up from the east tower and the third level summit is only accessible by lift. Once you are on the first or second platform the stairs are open for anyone to ascend or descend regardless of whether you have purchased a lift ticket or stair ticket. The actual count of stairs includes 9 steps to the ticket booth at the base, 328 steps to the first level, 340 steps to the second level and 18 steps to the lift platform on the second level. When exiting the lift at the third level 15 more steps exist to ascend to the upper observation platform. The step count is printed periodically on the side of the stairs to give an indication of progress. The majority of the ascent allows for an unhindered view of the area directly beneath and around the tower except during brief stretches of the stairway that are enclosed.

Maintenance of the tower includes applying 50 to 60 tons of three graded tones of paint every seven years to protect it from rust. On occasion the colour of the paint is changed the tower is currently painted a shade of brownish-grey. However, the tower is actually painted three different colours in order to make it look the same colour to an observer on the ground with the colors changing from dark to light from top to bottom. On the first floor there are interactive consoles hosting a poll for the colour to use for a future session of painting. The co-architects of the Eiffel Tower are Emile Nouguier, Maurice Koechlin and Stephen Sauvestre.

The structure was built between 1887 and 1889 as the entrance arch for the Exposition Universelle, a World’s Fair marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution. Eiffel originally planned to build it in Canada, for the Universal Exposition of 1888, but they rejected it. The tower was inaugurated on 31 March 1889, and opened on 6 May. Three hundred workers joined together 18,038 pieces of puddled iron (a very pure form of structural iron), using two and a half million rivets, in a structural design by Maurice Koechlin. The risk of accident was great, for unlike modern skyscrapers the tower is an open frame without any intermediate floors except the two platforms. Yet because Eiffel took safety precautions including use of movable stagings, guard-rails and screens, only one man died.

The tower was met with resistance from the public when it was built, with many calling it an eyesore. (Novelist Guy de Maupassant who claimed to hate the tower supposedly ate lunch at the Tower’s restaurant every day. When asked why, he answered that it was the one place in Paris where you couldn’t see the Tower.) Today, it is widely considered to be a striking piece of structural art.

One of the great Hollywood movie clich?s is that the view from a Parisian window always includes the tower. In reality, since zoning restrictions limit the height of most buildings in Paris to 7 stories, only the very few taller buildings have a clear view of the tower.

Eiffel had a permit for the tower to stand for 20 years, meaning it would have had to be dismantled in 1909, when its ownership would revert to the City of Paris. The City had planned to tear it down (part of the original contest rules for designing a tower was that it could be easily demolished) but as the tower proved valuable for communication purposes, it was allowed to remain after the expiration of the permit. The military used it to dispatch Parisian taxis to the front line during the First Battle of the Marne, and it therefore became a victory statue of that battle.

At the time the tower was built many people were shocked by its daring shape. Gustave Eiffel was criticised for the design and accused of trying to create something artistic, or inartistic according to the viewer, without regard to engineering. Eiffel and his engineers, as renowned bridge builders however, understood the importance of wind forces and knew that if they were going to build the tallest structure in the world they had to be certain it would withstand the wind. In an interview reported in the newspaper Le Temps, Eiffel said: Now to what phenomenon did I give primary concern in designing the Tower? It was wind resistance. Well then! I hold that the curvature of the monument’s four outer edges, which is as mathematical calculation dictated it should be (…) will give a great impression of strength and beauty, for it will reveal to the eyes of the observer the boldness of the design as a whole.

translated from the French newspaper Le Temps of 14 February 1887

The shape of the tower was therefore determined by mathematical calculation involving wind resistance. Several theories of this mathematical calculation have been proposed over the years, the most recent is a nonlinear integral differential equation based on counterbalancing the wind pressure on any point on the tower with the tension between the construction elements at that point. That shape is exponential.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the tower has been used for radio transmission. Until the 1950s, an occasionally modified set of antenna wires ran from the summit to anchors on the Avenue de Suffren and Champ de Mars. They were connected to long-wave transmitters in small bunkers; in 1909, a permanent underground radio centre was built near the south pillar and still exists today. On 20 November 1913 the Paris Observatory, using the Eiffel Tower as an antenna, exchanged sustained wireless signals with the United States Naval Observatory which used an antenna in Arlington, Virginia.

The object of the transmissions was to measure the difference in longitude between Paris and Washington, DC.

The tower has two restaurants: Altitude 95, on the first floor (95 m, 311 ft, above sea level); and the Jules Verne, an expensive gastronomical restaurant on the second floor, with a private lift. This restaurant has one star in the Michelin Red Guide. In January 2007 a new multi-Michelin star chef Alain Ducasse was brought in to run Jules Verne.

The uppermost observation deck, with a height of 275 metres, is the highest area of an architectural structure in the European Union open for the public.

The passenger lifts from ground level to the first level are operated by cables and pulleys driven by massive water-powered pistons. As they ascend the inclined arc of the legs, the elevator cabins tilt slightly, but with a slight jolt, every few seconds in order to keep the floor nearly level. The elevator works are on display and open to the public in a small museum located in one of the four tower bases, and waiting queues are much shorter than those for the tower ascent.

On 10 September 1889 Thomas Edison visited the tower. He signed the guestbook with the following message To M Eiffel the Engineer the brave builder of so gigantic and original specimen of modern Engineering from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu, Thomas Edison.

In 1902, the tower was struck by lightning (see photo below). 100 m (330 ft) of the top had to be reconstructed and the damaged lights illuminating the tower had to be replaced.
Father Theodor Wulf in 1910 took observations of radiant energy radiating at the top and bottom of the tower, discovering at the top more than was expected, and thereby detecting what are today known as cosmic rays.
In 1925, the con artist Victor Lustig twice “sold” the tower for scrap metal.
In 1930, the tower lost the title of the world’s tallest structure when the Chrysler Building was completed in New York City.
From 1925 to 1934, illuminated signs for Citro?n adorned three of the tower’s four sides, making it the tallest advertising space in the world at the time.
Upon the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1940, the lift cables were cut by the French so that Adolf Hitler would have to climb the steps to the summit. The parts to repair them were allegedly impossible to obtain because of the war. In 1940 Nazi soldiers had to climb to the top to hoist the swastika, but the flag was so large it blew away just a few hours later, and it was replaced by a smaller one. When visiting Paris, Hitler chose to stay on the ground. It was said that Hitler conquered France, but did not conquer the Eiffel Tower. A Frenchman scaled the tower during the German occupation to hang the French flag. In August 1944, when the Allies were nearing Paris, Hitler ordered General Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris, to demolish the tower along with the rest of the city. Von Choltitz disobeyed the order. The lifts of the Tower were working normally within hours of the Liberation of Paris (!)
On 3 January 1956, a fire damaged the top of the tower.
In 1957 the present radio antenna was added to the top.
In the 1980s an old restaurant and its supporting iron scaffolding midway up the tower was dismantled; it was purchased and reconstructed on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana by entrepreneurs John Onorio and Daniel Bonnot, originally as the Tour Eiffel Restaurant, known more recently as the Red Room. The restaurant was re-assembled from 11,000 pieces that crossed the Atlantic in a 40-feet cargo container.
In 1985’s James Bond action/adventure film A View to a Kill, Sir Roger Moore as James Bond chases May Day played by actress Grace Jones at the Eiffel Tower. She parachuted from the tower. The video of the film’s theme, performed by the group Duran Duran, also included several scenes of the band staged on the tower.
On New Year’s Eve 2000, the Eiffel Tower played host to Paris’ Millennium Celebration. Fireworks exploded from the whole length of the tower in a spectacular display.
In 2000, flashing lights and four high-power searchlights were installed on the tower. Since then the light show has become a nightly event. The searchlights on top of the tower make it a beacon in Paris’ night sky.
The tower received its 200,000,000th guest of all-time in 2002.
At 19:20 on 22 July 2003, a fire occurred at the top of the tower in the broadcasting equipment room. The entire tower was evacuated; the fire was extinguished after 40 minutes, and there were no reports of injuries.
Since 2004, the Eiffel Tower has hosted an ice skating rink on the first floor during the winter period. Skating is free in Paris.

Images of the tower have long been in the public domain; however, in 2003 SNTE (Soci?t? nouvelle d’exploitation de la tour Eiffel) installed a new lighting display on the tower. The effect was to put any night-time image of the tower and its lighting display under copyright. As a result, it was no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower at night without permission in some countries.

The imposition of copyright has been controversial. The Director of Documentation for SNTE, St?phane Dieu, commented in January 2005, “It is really just a way to manage commercial use of the image, so that it isn’t used in ways we don’t approve.” However, it also potentially has the effect of prohibiting tourist photographs of the tower at night from being published as well as hindering non profit and semi-commercial publication of images of the tower.

In a recent decision, the Court of Cassation ruled that copyright could not be claimed over images including a copyrighted building if the photograph encompassed a larger area. This seems to indicate that SNTE cannot claim copyright on photographs of Paris incorporating the lit tower.

In certain jurisdictions, this claim of copyright is explicitly disallowed. In Irish copyright law, works “permanently situated in a public place or in premises open to the public” may be freely included in visual reproductions.

Eiffel Tower at night

To see Eiffel tower at night is one of the most impressing moments you can enjoy in Paris. It is an immense structure that was built without any practical function like today’s towers usually have (TV broadcasting). It should serve as a city dominant only and show the greatness of French engineering to be memorized throughout the entire world. Eiffel Tower was built officially to celebrate the anniversary of the French revolution and was planed to be a part of the Universal Exhibition (the parent of today’s EXPO). Total costs of the building reached 7.8 million francs, but the admissions of the 1989 exhibition went to the amazing sum of 5,919,884 francs, and thus the tower proved to be not only a great monument, but also a good bargain.
The building process ended on March 31, 1889 with hoisting the French flag to the top, and thus Eiffel Tower is over 117 years old today. The contractor of Eiffel Tower was Gustave Eiffel & Cie and the tower was build under the technical leadership of two engineers: Maurice Koechlin & Emile Nouguier. The main architect was Stephen Sauvestre who began the studies on this tower in 1884 and the construction itself began in 1887. Only 2 years, 2 months, 5 days and 300 workers undertook the building process of such a tower, monumental especially for that century.
Eiffel Tower consists of 18,038 pieces and 2,500,000 rivets with the total weight of the entire metal structure reaching 7,300 tons, but the structure itself has a weight of 10,100 tons. The pure weight of paint layers on this structure is 40 tons and Eiffel tower is constantly being painted over. The height of Eiffel Tower is 324 meters (up to the flagpole, but it varies up to 15 centimeters depending on the air temperature because of the temperature expandability of steel). The maximum sway caused by dilation is 18 centimeters and the one caused by wind is 12 centimeters. Number of steps is also incredible: 1665. The size of base area of Eiffel tower is 10,281.96 square meters. If you want to visit Eiffel Tower, it could be interesting for you, that its coordinates are Latitude - 48?51′32″ North and Longitude - 002?17′45″ East, and you surely will discover it very quickly. The total number of visitors is something more than 225,000,000. It is amazing to see this monument, especially to see Eiffel Tower at night in its full glory and lights.

Industrial Maintenance

Open 365 days a year, welcoming somewhere close to 7 million visitors, the Eiffel Tower resembles a bustling factory behind the scenes!

Utility Goods

The monument depends on the national electrical company, EDF, to meet the Tower demands: 7,500,000 kilowatt hours yearly with 580,000 exclusively for the illuminations. Eighteen transformers handle the flow of current and in case of breakdown, 3 electrical groups will automatically take over. More than 100 bulb models are represented in the 10,000 that light up the Tower illuminations. The electricians must regularly change them, a task that involves climbing the structure itself. The entire installation relies on a network of 80 kilometers of electrical cables. Furthermore, 65,000 square meters of drinking water and 705,000 kilowatt hours of cooling and heating are also necessary annually.

Also, not to be overlooked, is the number of entrance tickets sold each year to visitors, especially since the Tower is the monument the most visited in the world. The Tower consumes 2 tons of paper per year in order to issue the necessary annual number of tickets.

Cleaning

Specialized industrial cleaning teams keep the Tower in tip-top condition. In order to complete their task throughout the year, they use 4 tons of paper or rag wipes, 10,000 doses of detergents, 400 liters of metal cleansers and 25,000 garbage bags.

The Elevators

Three elevators are at the service of visitors to go to the second floor and another four assure the ascension from the second floor to the top level. There is also a utility lift and an elevator reserved exclusively for visitors dining at the prestigious Jules Verne Restaurant.

An essential element of the monument, these elevators travel a distance of more than 103,000 kilometers annually, in other words, two and a half times around the earth!

Each compartment as well as the computer and electrical systems coupled to this historic machinery are overseen with great care: overhauled and repaired, parts replaced and joints greased, and close inspection of the 16 kilometers of cables. The elevators are the subject of constant check-ups by the monument’s technicians, who are also on the site very early each day to start up the systems before the visitors arrive. The host and hostesses are the actual elevator operators.

Security

The Tower is under surveillance 24 hours a day.
In case of fire, the Tower is equipped with 530 detectors, a network of sprinklers and 200 fire extinguishers of all types.
The fire hydrants on the first two floors receive their water from the ground via a column of water, while the top level draws from pressurized reservoirs.

A Career at the Tower

Many are those working with the SETE, the Tower operating company, and varied are their positions. There are the host and hostesses who speak several languages, available to assist the visitors from the four corners of the Earth. Among the technical staff, there are electricians, mechanics, plumbers, painters, locksmiths, computer engineers, carpenters…

The Tower is also home to numerous boutiques with their sellers, a post office, restaurants with their waiters and cooks, security guards, the maintenance team, the administrative employees…