CONSTRUCTION OF
THE EIFFEL TOWER
G'day folks,
Welcome to some rare photographs of one of the world’s most
famous towers.
I had previously come across time-lapse photographs of
the Eiffel Tower in its various stages of construction, but none
like this; none that went behind the scaffolding, right up close
inside the growing skeleton of what was to become one of the world’s most
famous monuments in history.
Construction began in 1887, designed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) and the tower was finished in time for the 1889 Paris Exhibition. Despite the 18,038 pieces of wrought iron, 2.5 million rivets being used to build the 10,000 ton and 984.25 feet high man-made structure, only 300 workers were employed to build it (some reports even estimate it was only 200 workers).
And from the looks of it– not a single hard hat (although perhaps the odd top hat)!
The tower was built as a symbol of modern science and engineering, but lucky for us history buffs, another technology was also in its infancy phase — photography. The foundations of the tower were captured by various budding photographers of the time, most of their work now archived by the Musée d’Orsay.
Now, check out these amazing photographs.
Clancy's comment: Great photographs. Great structure. I've been there as a tourist, but I certainly would not have been on the construction team.
I'm ...
No comments:
Post a Comment