An engineer by training, Eiffel founded and developed a company specializing in metal structural work, whose crowning achievement was the Eiffel Tower. He devoted the last thirty years of his life to his experimental research.
Born in Dijon in 1832, he graduated from the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in 1855, the same year that Paris hosted the first world’s Fair. He spent several years in the South West of France, where he supervized work on the great railway bridge in Bordeaux, and afterwards he set up in his own right in 1864 as a “constructor”, that is, as a business specializing in metal structural work.
His outstanding career as a constructor was marked by work on the Porto viaduct over the river Douro in 1876, the Garabit viaduct in 1884, Pest railway station in Hungary, the dome of the Nice observatory, and the ingenious structure of the Statue of Liberty. It culminated in 1889 with the Eiffel Tower.
After the end of his career in business, marred by the failure of the Panama Canal, Eiffel began an active life of scientific experimental research in the fields of meteorology, radiotelegraphy and aerodynamics. He died on December 27 1923.
Eiffel built hundreds of metal structures of all kinds, all around the world. Bridges, and in particular railway bridges, were his favourite field of work, but he also won renown for his metal structural work and industrial installations.
His career was marked by a large number of fine buildings, among which two of the most outstanding are the twin edifices of the Porto viaduct and the Garabit viaduct in the Cantal region of France.
Equally outstanding are certain other structures in which the pure inventiveness of Eiffel’s company was allowed free rein, such as the “portable” bridges sold around the world in “kits”, the ingenious structure of the Statue of Liberty in New York, and of course the Eiffel Tower itself.
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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