"The magician with steel" Gustave Eiffel also dealt with aerodynamics

Paris/Prague - His art gave rise to a whole series of remarkable buildings. However, it was the steel observation tower in the Martyrs' Fields in Paris that made Gustave Eiffel, who passed away exactly a century ago on December 28, 1923, famous. It bears his name and was built in 1889 to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution and the World Exhibition as a marvel of contemporary modern technology.

An outstanding designer who gained global recognition and admiration, he also designed bridges and viaducts, factories, exhibition and train station halls, churches, locks, lighthouses, and gas holders. From his workshop also came the internal supporting structure for the copper cladding of the Statue of Liberty, which dominates New York Harbor, or the rotating dome of the observatory in Nice. In Prague, he provided inspiration for the Petřín Lookout Tower. After retiring, Eiffel devoted himself to meteorological and aerodynamic research and radiotelegraphy.

The "wizard with steel" saw the light of day on December 15, 1832, in Dijon. At just 26 years old, as a fresh graduate from the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, he built the longest French railway bridge in Bordeaux at the time. In 1866, he established his own engineering office near Paris. Thanks to his idea of riveting individual parts of structures using compressed air, he boldly began constructing metal structures not only in France but also abroad – from neighboring Spain to Austria, Hungary, and Romania, all the way to Egypt, Peru, and Bolivia.

Eiffel's Maria Pia Bridge over the Douro River in Portugal became the very first arch structure in 1875. He later applied its technical aspects in the construction of the Garabit Railway Bridge over the Truyère River valley in southwestern France, which, at a height of 120 meters above the water level, was the highest viaduct in the world at that time. Eiffel also designed and assembled the supporting structure for the American Statue of Liberty, which was handed over to the American ambassador in Paris in 1886 and transported to New York on a French ship. From his workshop also came, among other things, the double crossing of the Yellow River in China, dozens of halls including railway station buildings in Paris and Budapest, and even the San Marcos Cathedral in Chile.

At the beginning of 1887, construction works began in the Martyrs' Fields in Paris for what would become Eiffel's largest work. With his design for a three-tiered steel tower, more than 300 meters high, he entered the competition for the construction on the occasion of the World Exhibition in Paris, and won. His enormous metal construction kit consisted of 15,000 components, which had to be assembled with two and a half million rivets with precision to within a tenth of a millimeter. Construction began in January 1887, and by March of the following year, the first floor was already completed, with the second finished six months later. However, the construction also elicited negative reactions. The public and prominent figures protested. For example, the essayist Léon Bloy called the tower "a truly tragic candlestick," and the writer Charles Huysmans referred to it as "a perforated cone."

Eiffel responded by saying that the arcs in the lowest part of the tower would impart "an impression of strength and beauty" to the structure, and the views between the individual structural elements would ensure that it would appear light. The construction of the "Iron Lady" proceeded according to entirely new technological parameters; the structure rose upwards with the assembly of perfectly calculated and manufactured rolled beams. In the end, Eiffel had to invest his own money into the construction, as the government, due to resistance and criticism, provided only a quarter of the costs. On the day of the ceremonial opening of the World Exhibition on May 5, 1889, the Eiffel Tower was illuminated with thousands of lights, silencing all the mockers.

Until 1929, when the Chrysler Building was completed in New York, the Eiffel Tower was the tallest man-made structure in the world. Over time, it became one of the symbols of Paris and even inspired Czech creators for the construction of the Petřín Lookout Tower. The tower also contributed to technical progress. At its summit, Eiffel had a small observation station built, which served to record air temperature, humidity, wind speed, and the deviation of the tower from its axis. In 1898, Eiffel's colleague at the Panthéon in Paris captured the first audio signal sent specifically from this tower.

After the triumph with the Eiffel Tower, however, came a steep fall for its creator. Alongside Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the Suez Canal, he was involved in the French project for the Panama Canal, which collapsed in 1889. He was accompanied by enormous corruption scandals, and thousands of people died during the construction; the canal was ultimately completed by the Americans. Eiffel was even sentenced to two years in prison. The appeal court overturned the verdict after review and completely acquitted the famous creator, though it deeply affected him, and he decided to retire.

In the twilight of his life, he turned to aerodynamics. In 1912, he built a laboratory where he was able, for example, to experimentally create wind at a speed of 80 meters per second to observe how this air pressure affects various materials of different shapes.

Gustave Eiffel, a short-statured Frenchman with bright eyes and a sparse beard, married Marie Geneviève Émilie Gaudelet in 1862 at the age of thirty; they had five children together. In 1877, however, his wife died of pneumonia at just 32 years old. He himself passed away less than fifty years later, two weeks after his 91st birthday, while listening to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in his Parisian home. He is buried in the family tomb at the cemetery in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret.