Alexandre Gustav Eiffel

The famous people pages have moved as part of the reorganisation of this website. Click to go to the new Famous People index page. If you are linked into this site, you will need to change your link to: http://www.terrace.qld.edu.au/academic/lote/french/y5index.htm

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a famous French engineer.

Eiffel was born in 1832 and died in 1923.

Eiffel was a talented and clever engineer who was most famous for his bridges and viaducts. Eiffel liked to work with new techonology, which in his time involved using wrought iron. He designed the Eiffel Tower using this material. He also designed the Statue of Liberty in New York.

The 1889 World Expo in Paris was held to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution in 1789. In 1884, it was decided to hold a competition to design an attraction which would bring more visitors to the World Expo. There were hundreds of entries, some of which - like a giant guillotine - were rather unusual. Eiffel's design of the Tower was the winning entry.

It took about twenty-six months to construct the Tower. At that time, the Eiffel Tower was the tallest building in the world at 321 metres in height. (1051 feet) It weighed 7 000 tonnes and two and half million rivets were used in its construction. An early picture of the Eiffel Tower. (Source unknown)

To begin with, the Eiffel Tower was not at all popular with the people of Paris. They did not like its shape, they thought it looked ugly. They wanted to pull it down as soon as the World Expo had finished. However, it proved to be the most popular place in Paris to visit. When World Expo had finished, people from all over the world were still coming to Paris, just to see the Eiffel Tower. So the people of Paris decided that they would keep it. Now it is ranked as the number one tourist attraction in the world.

In later years, he turned to studying aerodynamics.

The Eiffel Tower..

Back to the top of the page.