This article traces the evolution of the powered passenger elevator from its initial development in the mid-19th century to the installation of the three separate elevator systems in the Eiffel Tower in 1889. The design of the Tower’s elevators involved problems of capacity, length of rise, and safety far greater than any previously encountered in the field; and the equipment that resulted was the first capable of meeting the conditions of vertical transportation found in the just emerging skyscraper.
The Author: Robert M. Vogel is associate curator of mechanical and civil engineering, United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
The 1,000-foot tower that formed the focal point and central feature of the Universal Exposition of 1889 at Paris has become one of the best known of man’s works. It was among the most outstanding technological achievements of an age which was itself remarkable for such achievements.
Second to the interest shown in the tower’s structural aspects was the interest in its mechanical organs. Of these, the most exceptional were the three separate elevator systems by which the upper levels were made accessible to the Exposition visitors. The design of these systems involved problems far greater than had been encountered in previous elevator work anywhere in the world. The basis of these difficulties was the amplification of the two conditions that were the normal determinants in elevator design—passenger capacity and height of rise. In addition, there was the problem, totally new, of fitting elevator shafts to the curvature of the Tower’s legs. The study of the various solutions to these problems presents a concise view of the capabilities of the elevator art just prior to the beginning of the most recent phase of its development, marked by the entry of electricity into the field.
The great confidence of the Tower’s builder in his own engineering ability can be fully appreciated, however, only when notice is taken of one exceptional way in which the project differed from works of earlier periods as well as from contemporary ones. In almost every case, these other works had evolved, in a natural and progressive way, from a fundamental concept firmly based upon precedent. This was true of such notable structures of the time as the Brooklyn Bridge and, to a lesser extent, the Forth Bridge. For the design of his tower, there was virtually no experience in structural history from which Eiffel could draw other than a series of high piers that his own firm had designed earlier for railway bridges. It was these designs that led Eiffel to consider the practicality of iron structures of extreme height.
Larger Image
Figure 1.—The Eiffel Tower at the time of the
Universal Exposition of 1889 at Paris.
(From La Nature, June 29, 1889, vol. 17, p. 73.)
Figure 2.—Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923).
(From Gustave Eiffel, La Tour de Trois Cents Mètres,
Paris, 1900, frontispiece.)
There was, it is true, some inspiration to be found in the paper projects of several earlier designers—themselves inspired by that compulsion which throughout history seems to have driven men to attempt the erection of magnificently high structures.
One such inspiration was a proposal made in 1832 by the celebrated but eccentric Welsh engineer Richard Trevithick to erect a 1,000-foot, conical, cast-iron tower to celebrate the passing of the Reform Bill. Of particular interest in light of the present discussion was Trevithick’s plan to raise visitors to the summit on a piston, driven upward within the structure’s hollow central tube by compressed air. It probably is fortunate for Trevithick’s reputation that his plan died shortly after this and the project was forgotten.
One project of genuine promise was a tower proposed by the eminent American engineering firm of Clarke, Reeves & Company to be erected at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876. At the time, this firm was perhaps the leading designer and erector of iron structures in the United States, having executed such works as the Girard Avenue Bridge over the Schuylkill at Fairmount Park, and most of New York’s early elevated railway system. The company’s proposal for a 1,000-foot shaft of wrought-iron columns braced by a continuous web of diagonals was based upon sound theoretical knowledge and practical experience. Nevertheless, the natural hesitation that the fair’s sponsors apparently felt in the face of so heroic a scheme could not be overcome, and this project also remained a vision.
In the year 1885, the Eiffel firm, which also had an extensive background of experience in structural engineering, undertook a series of investigations of tall metallic piers based upon its recent experiences with several lofty railway viaducts and bridges. The most spectacular of these was the famous Garabit Viaduct (1880-1884), which carries a railroad some 400 feet above the valley of the Truyere in southern France. While the 200-foot height of the viaduct’s two greatest piers was not startling even at that period, the studies proved that piers of far greater height were entirely feasible in iron construction. This led to the design of a 395-foot pier, which, although never incorporated into a bridge, may be said to have been the direct basis for the Eiffel Tower.
Preliminary studies for a 300-meter tower were made with the 1889 fair immediately in mind. With an assurance born of positive knowledge, Eiffel in June of 1886 approached the Exposition commissioners with the project. There can be no doubt that only the singular respect with which Eiffel was regarded not only by his profession but by the entire nation motivated the Commission to approve a plan which, in the hands of a figure of less stature, would have been considered grossly impractical.
Between this time and commencement of the Tower’s construction at the end of January 1887, there arose one of the most persistently annoying of the numerous difficulties, both structural and social, which confronted Eiffel as the project advanced. In the wake of the initial enthusiasm—on the part of the fair’s Commission inspired by the desire to create a monument to French technological achievement, and on the part of the majority of Frenchmen by the stirring of their imagination at the magnitude of the structure—there grew a rising movement of disfavor. The nucleus was, not surprisingly, formed mainly of the intelligentsia, but objections were made by prominent Frenchmen in all walks of life. The most interesting point to be noted in a retrospection of this often violent opposition was that, although the Tower’s every aspect was attacked, there was remarkably little criticism of its structural feasibility, either by the engineering profession or, as seems traditionally to be the case with bold and unprecedented undertakings, by large numbers of the technically uninformed laity. True, there was an undercurrent of what might be characterized as unease by many property owners in the structure’s shadow, but the most obstinate element of resistance was that which deplored the Tower as a mechanistic intrusion upon the architectural and natural beauties of Paris. This resistance voiced its fury in a flood of special newspaper editions, petitions, and manifestos signed by such lights of the fine and literary arts as De Maupassant, Gounod, Dumas fils, and others. The eloquence of one article, which appeared in several Paris papers in February 1887, was typical:
We protest in the name of French taste and the national art culture against the erection of a staggering Tower, like a gigantic kitchen chimney dominating Paris, eclipsing by its barbarous mass Notre Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, the tower of St. Jacques, the Dôme des Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, humiliating these monuments by an act of madness.
Further, a prediction was made that the entire city would become dishonored by the odious shadow of the odious column of bolted sheet iron.