the history of eiffel tower

After the debacle of the Panama Canal with Ferdinand De 

Lessups, Gustave Eiffel began to experiment with enterprises to prove

the usefulness of his tower. He had begun to develop a passionate 

interest in that which, at the turn of the century, was considered 

avant-garde science: meteorology, radiotelegraphy and aerodynamics. 


 

In 1889, M. Eiffel began to fit the peak of the tower as an observation 

station to measure the speed of wind. He also encouraged several 

scientific experiments including Foucault's giant pendulum, a mercury 

barometer and the first experiment of radio transmission. In 1898, 

Eugene Ducretet at the Pantheon, received signals from the tower.



After M. Eiffel had experimented in the field of meterology, he begun 

to look at the effects of wind and air resistance, the science 

that would later be termed aerodynamics, which has become a large part 

of both military and commerical aviation as well as rocket 

technology. Gustave Eiffel imagined an automatic device sliding along 

a cable that was stretched between the ground and the second floor of 

the Eiffel Tower. 



The limited capacity of the available measuring instruments, led M. 

Eiffel to a more sophisticated knowledge in aviation and, eventually, to 

wind tunnel experiments. He built a wind tunnel on the Champ de 

Mars, which was in use from 1909-1911. The tunnel was sufficient for 

lab experiments bit inadequate for the study of airplanes. However, 

with the help of several other engineers, Leon Rith, Lapresle, and 

Eiffel made over 5,000 tests in this lab.  Almost all the pioneers of 

aviation tested in this wind tunnel. 



In 1911, a better wind tunnel which is still in use was built and between 

1912-1914, Eiffel began experiments with military equipment for WWI 

fighter planes. In 1917, the Eiffel Laboratory designed a very advanced 

monoplane chaser of which two prototypes were built in Breguet. One 

crashed due to pilot error. 

M. Eiffel was a contemporary of Samuel Langeley, the president of the 

Smithstonian Institute, for whom the NASA field center Langely 

Research Center was named. Much of Eiffel's work had gone on to help 

expand the science of aerodynamics.  NASA used many propeller and 

wind tunnel experiments in their trainer planes for astronauts. 

Source: endex.com