(Truyère River near Saint-Flour, France.
Spanning 162 met...)
Truyère River near Saint-Flour, France.
Spanning 162 meters (541 feet), this wrought-iron railroad bridge was designed by Gustave Eiffel and completed in 1884.
Gustave Eiffel was a French civil engineer. He is known as the person who designed and oversaw the construction of the Eiffel Tower.
Background
Gustave Eiffel was born on December 15th, 1832 in Dijon, France. His father, François Alexandre Boenickhausen, known as "Eiffel," was a former hussar from Napoleon’s armies. But the figurehead of the family was certainly his mother, Catherine Mélanie Moneuse. Daughter of a timber tradesman, she had the idea very early on to start trading coal. Her small business grew quickly thanks to the ongoing industrial revolution, so much so that her husband quit his activities to assist her.
With his parents working constantly, the boy was raised for the most part by his maternal grandmother, a blind and sour tempered old woman, who didn’t hesitate to hit him with her stick. Gustave won’t hold it against her - later writing that: "the poor woman didn’t strike that hard" - nor will he against his mother, Catherine, for whom he’ll always have the greatest respect. In return, the self-made woman was her son’s unfailing supporter and acted as his first and most trusted advisor.
Education
Gustave Eiffel studied at the Lycée Royal in Dijon. Gustave's uncle Jean-Baptiste Mollerat and his chemist friend Michel Perret played an instrumental role in educating Gustave on varied subjects including philosophy, theology, chemistry, and mining.
To prepare himself for the different entrance exams of engineering colleges, he joined the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris. In 1852 he cleared entrance exams of École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures and École Polytechnique both of which were renowned schools in France. He enrolled at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures and studied chemistry. In 1855, he completed his graduation earning the thirteenth position out of eighty candidates.
After completing his graduation Gustave Eiffel did an unpaid job for a few months to assist his brother-in-law in a foundry. He got his first paid job as the secretary of Charles Nepveu, a railway engineer. When the company of Nepveu became bankrupt, he arranged for a bridge design work for Eiffel that was to be constructed for the Saint Germaine railway. Compagnie Belge de Matériels de Chemin de Fer, the company that took over a few businesses of Nepveu made him the managing director of its two factories, and eventually, Eiffel headed the research department.
In 1857, Nepveu got a contract for the construction of a railway bridge over the river Garonne, Bordeaux, and Eiffel was given the job of assembling the metalwork. Later from March 1860, Eiffel managed the whole project following Nepveu’s resignation. Eiffel was made the chief engineer of Compagnie Belge de Matériels de Chemin de Fer and was further promoted. As the business of the company declined, he resigned in 1865. He started working independently as a consulting engineer and got involved in the construction of the railway station at Toulouse and at Agen. In 1866, he got a contract of supervising the construction of locomotives for the government of Egypt and in that pursuit, he visited Egypt.
His reputation as an architect and civil engineer got him more projects and he established his own workshop in 1866 and undertook projects in different countries. One such project was the all-metal construction of the church of San Marcos in Arica, Chile. Various parts of the project were manufactured in France and shipped to the site to be assembled there. His technical innovations were path-breaking (especially prefabrication of cantilever constructions). On October 6, 1868, he along with Théophile Seyrig formed the company Eiffel et Cie and received several important projects.
The Exposition Universelle in 1878 cemented his position as a leading engineer of his time. Many of the buildings of the exhibition were constructed by him. He and Théophile Seyrig terminated the partnership in 1879 and the company was re-christened as Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel. The company bagged the project of constructing a railway bridge, Garabit Viaduct in France in that very year. The bridge that was completed in 1884 was considered the highest bridge in the world at that time adding another feather in Eiffel’s cap.
He was contacted by Auguste Bartholdi in 1881 to design the interior metallic structure of the Statue of Liberty in Liberty Island, New York, United States after the sudden death of its engineer Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc in 1879. The parts of the statue were first assembled at his workshop in Paris and after checking it was again dismantled and shipped in parts to the United States for its final assembly. The statue was opened in 1886.
Advancing in his career in 1886, he designed a dome for the Nice Observatory, an astronomical observatory in Nice, France. The dome which was noted for its movable feature was the largest of its kind in the world at that time.
His most noted masterpiece that bears his name and went on to become one of his prominent works is the Eiffel Tower. Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin first made a design of the tower that would become the centerpiece of the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The work of the tower began in 1887 which included 2,500,000 rivets and 12,000 other components, all designed in such a way that when assembled would handle wind pressure. Economically feasible, the structure if melted would occupy only about two and a half inches of its base. He took two years to construct the Eiffel Tower, whose height is 984 feet. It is not only a prominent tourist attraction in France but is also considered a work of art today by the Parisians and critics.
He earned a contract in 1887 for building locks for the Panama Canal. His reputation was hurt after he was charged with misappropriation of funds along with Ferdinand De Lesseps, the head of the French Panama Canal Company, and Lesseps’s son following the liquidation of the company. On February 9, 1893, he was found guilty and sentenced for two years in prison along with a fine of 20,000 francs. A further appeal at the Cour de Cassation however acquitted him of all charges and obligations.
The construction of the Eiffel tower infused in him the interest for aerodynamics. He built an aerodynamic laboratory in 1905 at the base of the tower and in 1909 constructed his first-ever wind tunnel there. Post-retirement from engineering he devoted the rest of his life studying meteorology and aerodynamics. In 1912, he moved his set up from the tower to a new location at Auteuil and established a larger research laboratory there. One of his noted books on aerodynamics among the many he wrote is Resistance of the Air and Aviation.
On December 27, 1923, he died while in his mansion on Rue Rabelais in Paris and was buried in Levallois-Perret Cemetery in the family tomb.
Gustave Eiffel, after having been a daring and inventive builder, while being a wise businessman and a great leader of men, became at the end of his life, one of the greatest learned French patrons in the fields aerodynamics, meteorology, and radio transmissions.
Though he designed and constructed a number of great structures in his illustrious career, his most famous and iconic structure is the world-famous Eiffel Tower.
In 1913, the Smithsonian Institution honored him with the Samuel P. Langley Medal for Aerodromics award.
Quotations:
"I ought to be jealous of the tower. It is more famous than I am."
"Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long-lasting structures? Aren't the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony?"
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
In his speech at the presentation of the medal, Alexander Graham Bell said:
"... his writings upon the resistance of the air have already become classical. His researches, published in 1907 and 1911, on the resistance of the air in connection with aviation, are especially valuable. They have given engineers the data for designing and constructing flying machines upon sound, scientific principles."
Connections
Gustave Eiffel got married to Marguerite Gaudelet on July 8th, 1862. The couple remained married for fifteen years and had five children together: three daughters (Claire, Laure, Valentine) and two sons (Edouard and Albert). Marie caught pneumonia and died in 1887. Gustave never married again.
