French civil engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was born on December 15, 1832 in Dijon, France.
In 1855, Gustave Eiffel received an engineering degree from the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Paris and got a job at the Charles Neveau design company, which was engaged in the construction of bridges.
In 1858, he supervised the construction of a railway bridge in Bordeaux, using metal structures and using a method of pneumatic installation of foundations that he himself had invented. In the same year, he became a partner of the employer, and two years later he founded his own metal structures plant in Levallois-Perret near Paris.
In 1875, together with the architect Louis-Charles Boileau, he built the Eau Bon Marché store in Paris. Its passages, covered with glass domes, have become a role model throughout the world.
In 1877, according to the architect’s design, a bridge was built across the Douro River in Porto (Portugal) with a 162-meter arch.
In total, Eiffel built more than 200 structures: bridges, viaducts, train stations, banks, schools, churches, casinos. The engineer's main idea was to manufacture lattice structures, which he considered more durable and economical than solid ones. Almost all of his 36 bridges are included in textbooks as examples of daring engineering solutions. One of Eiffel’s most daring projects was the Garabit Viaduct (1884) in France, which spanned a deep gorge with an arched span of 165 meters.
Gustave Eiffel became world famous thanks to the openwork steel tower, known as the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 World Exhibition in Paris and which became one of the symbols of the French capital.
The total height of the tower reached 312 meters, weight - 9.7 thousand tons. During its construction, a number of methods for installing building structures that were progressive for that time were used. The tower had three platforms at heights of 57, 115 and 276 meters. On the first and second of them there were restaurants and observation decks. The third platform housed the engineer's office, as well as astronomical and meteorological laboratories. In case the elevator broke down, a staircase of 1,792 steps led up.
In the 1890s, after the scandal surrounding the Panama Canal, where Eiffel developed the lock project, the engineer left the business and began research work in the field of aerodynamics. In 1909, an engineer built the first aerodynamic laboratory in Paris. He discovered the phenomenon of the drag crisis of bluff bodies (1912), and improved the technique of aerodynamic experiments.
As an expert, Eiffel served on many commissions, including the one that dealt with the construction of the Paris metro.
Eiffel was married to the daughter of his supplier, Marie Gaudelet, who died after 15 years of marriage, giving birth to the engineer five children.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
The name of the French engineer Gustav Eiffel is known to everyone in connection with the tower he erected for the world exhibition held in 1889 in Paris. Few people know about his other buildings. But this is unfair, because the engineer went a long way before building his tower, and some of his works are no less worthy of attention.
Eiffel was born in 1832 in Dijon. In 1855 he graduated from the Institute of Technology in Paris and received a diploma as a chemical engineer. He went to work in railway workshops and subsequently became interested in designing railway bridges. Since 1868, Eiffel has been the owner of his own engineering and construction enterprise.
Eiffel's engineering talent was fully revealed during the construction of the railway that crossed the Pyrenees - the mountain range that separates France from Spain and Portugal. On its way, the railway encountered deep and wide cliffs, at the bottom of which mountain rivers raged. So, the most important task was to build bridges with incredibly large spans and high supports. Eiffel approached the problem not only as an engineer, but also as a chemist. In his time, steel structures were just beginning to be used, instead of the more proven cast iron ones. It was a very common belief that iron and steel were better able to withstand tension than compression. Therefore, they were readily used in the construction of vaults, but were avoided in supports. Bridges with metal spans have been built on stone piers for a very long time. After carefully studying the properties of the new material, Eiffel came to a different conclusion. The railway bridges he built in the Pyrenees rest on openwork steel towers.
In 1870, Eiffel's company received an order to build a railway bridge across the mountain river Douro in Portugal. Over a significant area, the bridge could not have any supports, therefore, flowing in a mountain gorge, the Duero River was also 15-20 m deep. Eiffel calculated with great accuracy the dimensions of the grandiose run, but the construction of the bridge over the Duero was only a step towards the creation of a more significant structure - a railway bridge near the city of Gharabi.
Erected in 1883, the Garabite Bridge crosses the gorge with the mountain river Truer. It has a length of 565 m. Its central part is a huge arched span 165 m long.
Eiffel Tower
The railway track passes over the river valley at an altitude of 122.5 m. The bridge is formed by openwork steel structures, the supports are lattice towers that have the shape of truncated pyramids. Everything here is strictly functional, everything is subordinated to practical tasks. After all, the bridge must withstand not only its own gigantic mass, not only the weight of trains, but also powerful mountain winds. Eiffel brilliantly completed the technical task that stood before him. When a train weighing 405 tons stood on the Garabit Bridge, the deflection of the structure was only 8 mm. But what’s interesting is that this pragmatic structure, devoid of special decorations, also turned out to be surprisingly beautiful.
Eiffel Tower
At the end of the 80s of the XIX century. The French government decided to create a structure that the world had not yet seen for the anniversary of the Great French Revolution. And then Eiffel put forward the design of his famous tower. At first he wanted to decorate the lattice steel structure with sculptures. But the further he worked on the project, the more he realized that it would be unnecessary. The engineer created a new aesthetics - the aesthetics of “singing supports”. In the final version, the structure had almost no parts that would not bear a structural load.
The Eiffel project had many enemies. A group of French intellectuals even sent letters to the director of the international exhibition, protesting against the construction of this “monster” in the center of Paris. The letter, by the way, bears the signature of Guy de Maupassant. But perhaps the French classic is wrong this time.
Statue of Liberty
The Eiffel Tower, with its height of 312 m, was the tallest structure of its time, leaving its rivals far behind.
But in our time, many structures exceeding it have already appeared.
However, there is not a single one that, with such dimensions, would retain such grace of outline. In the 19th century the tower had no practical purpose. It was built to amaze the imagination. Regarding Eiffel, when he built it, he intended to embody some of his theoretical ideas. In particular, he was very interested in the ability of a high-rise structure to withstand wind pressure. Solving exactly this problem, he gave the tower ribs a smooth hyperbolic segment shape. For some time the tower was even going to be dismantled, but the emergence of radio and television gave this building practical significance.
Among Eiffel’s works there is one more, very famous, but few people know that it was he who participated in its creation. Meanwhile, Eiffel mounted the supporting frame of the Statue of Liberty, which France gave to America and which is now the symbol of this state.
20th century US architecture
In the 20th century the trends established in the previous period were further developed. In 1903, the French architect O. Perret built the world's first reinforced concrete residential building. Subsequently, concrete becomes a favorite material. Engineers and architects are increasingly excited about new possibilities. They are trying to convey to people the beauty of unusual technical solutions. In the 30s, the already mentioned A. Perret, having become a teacher at the Special School of Architecture, will tell his students: “Build so that the supports sing.”
In the last decade of the 19th century. In America, they are beginning to build skyscrapers - houses whose foundation was a steel frame, thanks to which they could have dozens of floors and stretch hundreds of meters in height. Another factor that contributed to the construction of skyscrapers was the use of the elevator. Now multi-storey buildings are no longer inconvenient. The pioneer of skyscraper construction was the Chicago architect L. Sullivan. The first buildings of this type had decorative details that made them look like Gothic cathedrals. This stylization was subsequently abandoned. The Chicago department store, built in 1899, has no unnecessary decorations. Artistic expressiveness is achieved here thanks to clear geometric shapes and grandiose sizes. Skyscrapers continued to be built throughout the 20th century. The champion among them was the now-infamous double skyscraper of the World Trade Center, built in the 70s. The height of its towers exceeded 400 m. Skyscrapers were also built in other countries of the world.
Glasgow. Art school.. 1897-1909
Architect C. Mackintosh
D. Adler and L. Sullivan. Bayard Building in New York. 1895
The founder of a completely different architectural style was the American F. Wright. If Sullivan's ideas are the product of a large capitalist city, in which every piece of land can generate huge profits and therefore must be used as rationally as possible, then Wright is focused on the values of a completely different America. This America is not the country of big cities known to us, but the country of small towns and farms, glorified by Mark Twain, a country whose basis of existence was once the right of every citizen to receive his own piece of land.
D. Adler and L. Sullivan. Guaranty Building in Buffalo. 1895
F. Wright creates the so-called “Prairie style”. Its buildings are made of reinforced concrete; the houses do not extend vertically upward. On the contrary, they form horizontal elements. The entire structure seems to be spread out on the ground, sometimes it follows the shape of the relief. The direction founded by Wright, which he developed throughout the first half of the 20th century, was called “organic architecture,” that is, one that combines man with nature. Its development culminated in Wright's 1936 "Falling House" in Pennsylvania. The creation of this architect is also the building of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. This structure looks more like a giant spiral shell.
Mies van der Rohe. IBM building in Chicago. 1973
After the First World War, European architecture became generally more pragmatic. This is due to the need to restore destroyed cities and provide a large number of people with living space. In Germany, which suffered more than other Western European countries during the war, the Bauhaus architectural school was formed in 1924, the founder of which was V. Gropius. The Bauhaus slogan was: “What looks good is what works well.”
(1832-1923) French engineer
The end of the 19th century is rightly called the golden period in the history of engineering. Indeed, the names of the creators of famous buildings serve as unique milestones in the history of the development of architecture. Perhaps this is why Alexander Eiffel is known to the general public exclusively as the creator of the famous tower in Paris. Meanwhile, he lived a long life and created many other structures.
The future designer was born in Burgundy, in the city of Dijon, where his father owned extensive vineyards. However, he was not interested in agriculture and after graduating from high school he entered the famous Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. After studying there for three years, he moved to the Central School of Arts and Crafts, from which he graduated in 1855.
Since engineering was considered an auxiliary discipline at that time, he went to work for one of the bridge-building firms. Eiffel designed his first bridge in 1858. To secure the piles more firmly, he suggested not driving them in, but pressing them into the bottom using a hydraulic press. Today this technique is rarely used due to its complex technical preparation.
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel had to develop a special device to accurately place the piles, the ends of which had to be at a depth of twenty-five meters. After the successful construction of the bridge, he becomes a recognized bridge engineer and over the next twenty years creates many different structures - bridges across the Douro River in Portugal, the Mississippi in St. Louis (USA).
When building the first bridge, Alexander Eiffel abandoned the construction of grandiose wooden scaffolding - he assembled a huge steel arch on one of the banks and installed it using just one cable stretched between the two banks of the river. True, only fifty years later this technique began to be used everywhere.
Eiffel's most daring project was a viaduct over the Thuyer River. The difficulty was that it was necessary to block a deep mountain gorge one hundred and sixty-five meters wide. Several engineers received a similar proposal, but only Alexander Eiffel agreed. He proposed covering the entire span with one huge arch, which would rest on two concrete pylons.
During the construction of the arch, all calculations were carried out so accurately that during installation, its two halves coincided to within tenths of a millimeter. The construction of this bridge became a good school for Eiffel. He acquired certain skills that allowed him to improve in his chosen profession.
Together with a group of engineers, he developed an original method for calculating steel structures of almost any configuration. Shortly after the completion of the bridge, Eiffel participated in the design of an industrial exhibition that was to be held in Paris in 1878.
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel and the famous French engineer de Dion are designing the so-called “Hall of Machines” - a majestic structure 420 meters long, 115 meters wide and 45 meters high. Its frame was made of openwork metal beams that supported glass frames of the original design.
When the leaders of the construction company got acquainted with the project of Alexandre Eiffel, they considered that it was impossible to implement it, primarily because at that time there were no buildings of this size at all. Nevertheless, the “Hall of Machines” was built. Eiffel received a gold medal for his unsurpassed technical solution. Unfortunately, in 1910 this wonderful building was dismantled for scrap.
It is curious that it all rested on small concrete pads. This technique allowed the designer to get rid of the inevitable deformations associated with the natural displacement of the soil. Subsequently, Alexander Eiffel repeatedly used a similar method in the construction of his buildings.
For the Paris Exhibition of 1889, he proposed erecting a metal tower, which was to become the architectural dominant of the exhibition town. And again he applied new engineering developments. The tower, about 300 meters high, was assembled from thin metal elements connected with rivets. Her translucent silhouette seemed to float above the city.
However, now there might not be a famous tower in Paris. In February 1888, a month after the start of work on the tower was announced, the chairman of the exhibition committee was handed a protest signed by a group of writers and artists. They proposed abandoning construction, arguing that the tower would disfigure the familiar cityscape.
But the famous French architect T. Alphand rightly suggested that the tower would become the dominant feature not only of the exhibition, but of the entire city. Indeed, less than twenty years later his prediction came true. The tower began to be called the Eiffel Tower, and it turned into a symbol of Paris.
During the construction of the tower, its creator met the famous American architect T. Bartholdi, who designed the American pavilion at the exhibition, the center of which was a small bronze statue, which was the personification of Freedom.
After the exhibition ended, the statue was enlarged to ninety-three meters in size and donated by France to the United States of America. However, when it was delivered to the site, it turned out that a steel frame was needed for its installation. Alexander Eiffel began to develop it, because at that time he was the only engineer who had experience in calculating the wind resistance of structures.
The frame he created turned out to be so successful that the statue stood for more than a hundred years, successfully resisting strong winds from the ocean. Several years ago, when it underwent restoration, it was decided to check Eiffel's calculations using a computer. The frame he created was exactly the same as the one proposed by the machine.
After his triumph at two world exhibitions, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel concentrated his efforts on scientific research. In the small town of Auteuil, he created the world's first laboratory to study the effects of wind on various structures. He was the first architect to place models of his structures in a wind tunnel. Alexander Eiffel described the results of his work in a series of fundamental works, which are rightfully considered a real encyclopedia of engineering art.
In 1855 he received an engineering degree from the Central School of Arts and Manufactures in Paris. Before the construction of the Eiffel Tower, it was known for its impressive steel structures for bridges, the Ponte de Dona Maria Pia over the Douro near Porto in Portugal, as well as the 500-meter-long railway bridge in Bordeaux, and train stations in the city of Budapest. He also completed the Viaduct de Garabi - a railway viaduct in southern France - which rose above the valley at an altitude of 122 meters and was at one time the highest in the world. He took part in the construction of the iron frame for the New York Statue of Liberty, in the competition for the construction of the Trinity Bridge in St. Petersburg, and in the Amazonian outback he built the so-called. Iron house.
He was an engineer for the Panama Society and a supplier for it of machines manufactured at its engineering plant in Levallois-Perret (near Paris). The revelations concerning the Panama Society also affected him; he was accused of receiving 19 million francs from the Panama Society for fictitious work. Put on trial (1893) along with father and son Lesseps and other persons involved in the case, Eiffel was sentenced to 2 years in prison and a 20,000 franc fine, but the Court of Cassation overturned the sentence due to the expiration of the criminal statute of limitations.
He developed and brought to life the idea of a rotating dome of the observatory in Nice, which, despite its weight of 100 tons, can be easily moved by one person; improved the system of movable bridges, etc.
He wrote, among other things:
- “Conf?rence de Gustave Eiffel sur la tour de 300 m?tres” (P., 1889);
- "Les ponts portatifs ?conomiques" (in collaboration with Collins, P., 1888).
Objects designed by Gustave Eiffel
- Eiffel Tower, Paris, France. (1889)
- Central Train Station, Santiago, Chile. (1897)
- West railway station, Budapest, Hungary. (1877)
- Dome for the Nice Observatory, Nice, France. (1878)
- Maria Pia Bridge, Porto, Portugal. (1877)
- Elevator Santa Justa, Lisbon, Portugal. (1901)
- Iron House, Iquitos, Peru. (1887)
- Statue of Liberty, New York, USA. (1886) (assisted the main architect)
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was erected on the Champ de Mars, opposite the Jena Bridge; in height (324 m) it is almost 2 times higher than the tallest buildings of that time (the Cheops Pyramid 137 m, Cologne Cathedral 156 m, Ulm Cathedral 161 m, etc.). The entire tower is made of iron and consists of three floors.
Construction of the Eiffel Tower lasted 26 months, from January 28, 1887 to March 31, 1889, and cost taxpayers 6.5 million francs. During the six months of the exhibition, more than 2 million visitors came to see the “Iron Lady”. The construction was such a success that by the end of the year it was possible to recover three-quarters of all construction costs.
Alexander Gustav Eiffel photography
He built railways, bridges (the bridge in Bordeaux, the bridge over the Duero Oporto in Portugal and many others), viaducts, train stations (in Pest), the rotating dome of the observatory in Nice, which, despite the weight of 100,000 kg, can easily lead one person in motion; improved the system of movable bridges, etc.
He was an engineer for the Panama Society and a supplier of machines for it, prepared at its engineering plant in Levalloa Perret (near Paris).
The revelations concerning the Panama Society also affected him; he was accused of receiving 19 million from the Panama Society. franc, for fictitious work. Put on trial (1893) together with father and son Lesseps and other persons involved in the case, Eiffel was sentenced to 2 years in prison and 20,000 francs. fine, but the cassation court overturned the verdict due to the expiration of the criminal statute of limitations.
Eiffel gained worldwide fame with the construction of a tower in Paris for the 1889 exhibition, one of the most remarkable technical structures of the 19th century. The Eiffel Tower was erected on the Champ de Mars, opposite the Jena Bridge; in height (300 m) it is almost 2 times higher than the tallest buildings in the world (Cheops Pyramid 137 m, Cologne Cathedral 156 m, Ulm Cathedral 161 m, etc.).
The entire tower is made of iron and consists of three floors. The lower floor is a pyramid (129.2 m each side at the base), formed by 4 columns connected at a height of 57.63 m by an arched vault; on the vault is the first platform of the Eiffel Tower. The platform is a square (65 m in diameter).
On this platform rises a second pyramid-tower, also formed by 4 columns connected by a vault on which there is (at a height of 115.73 m) a second platform (a square 30 m in diameter). Four columns rising on the second platform, pyramidally approaching and gradually intertwining, form a colossal pyramidal column (190 m), carrying a third platform (at a height of 276.13 m), also square in shape (16.5 m in diameter ); there is a lighthouse with a dome on it, above which there is a platform (1.4 m in diameter) at an altitude of 300 m.
There are stairs (1792 steps) and a lifting machine leading to the tower. On the first platform there are a number of rooms reserved for a restaurant; the second platform houses water tanks for the hydraulic lifting machine and a restaurant in a glass gallery.
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The third platform houses the astronomical and meteorological observatories and the physics room; from the balconies of platform 3 there is a view of 140 km. in a circle. The lighthouse illuminates an area 10 km away. The total weight of the tower is about 9 million. kg; iron parts 7.3 million. kg.
The foundation is made of concrete masses. The vibrations of the tower during storms did not exceed 15 cm. Construction of the Eiffel Tower lasted from January 28, 1887 to March 31, 1889 and cost 6.5 million. francs The Eiffel Tower belonged to a joint stock company; in 1909 it became the property of the state.