The Eiffel Tower: Europe's Greatest Landmark

this episode is brought to you by curiositystream a subscription streaming service that offers thousands of documentaries and non-fiction titles and right now for a limited time you guys can get 25 off the cost of a subscription more on that in just a bit what's the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word paris for roughly ninety percent of you the answer isn't notre dame or the sen or people who inexplicably think the beret is an acceptable fashion choice no instead your mind almost certainly went to a 132 year old iron spike a feat of 19th century engineering that still stands guard over the french capital skyline the eiffel tower by some measures the most visited tourist destination on earth the eiffel tower today is synonymous with everything we think about france it's elegant charming timeless people didn't always see it this way not so long ago it was perhaps the most hated landmark in existence erected in 1889 by millionaire gustav phel the eiffel tower was controversial from the get-go outraged parisians compared it to everything from a smokestack to a suppository even after its success at the world's fair it was earmarked for demolition yet somehow it survived protests war and adolf hitler to become one of the world's most enduring icons [Music] the 19th century french dudes 1889 was a hell of a significant year exactly a century earlier an angry parisian mob had stormed the bastille effectively kicking off the french revolution from this moment it sprung the abolition of the monarchy the birth of the french republic the declaration of the rights of man and all the other things that francophiles get dizzy just thinking about so it should have been a natural decision to somehow mark this momentous occasion but note the key word there should in the hundred years since 1789 events had shown that the memory of the revolution was still wildly unsettled there had been napoleon's empire which crushed the first republics the restoration of the monarchy the birth and death of the short-lived second republic the second empire reigned over by napoleon's nephew napoleon iii even when the current government the third republic had finally arrived on the scene in 1870 it had been forced to fight the revolutionary paris commune for control a bloody battle that had killed thousands in short 1880s france was a tinderbox of monarchists republicans bonapartists and communards all of whom saw the 1789 revolution very differently on top of that a stock market crashed in 1882 had left the country in a deep depression whatever celebration took place would have to be both as uncontroversial as possible and extremely cheap as 1889 approached the government of the third republic started toying with the idea of marking the centenary with an exposure universal what we'd call a world's fair the last one they'd thrown in the 1870s had been well attended but had lost the treasury over 30 million francs on the other hand when napoleon iii held one under the second french empire it turned a tidy profit clearly it was possible to make money off of these things and an exposition would also be less provocative than simply say singing la ma soleil while dancing around a guillotine but it would still have to be big a big exposition with a big centerpiece one that acknowledged the third republic's debt to 1789 without encouraging the unwashed masses to start chopping off people's heads again it would be from these twin necessities that paris's greatest landmark would be born on november the 8th 1884 president jourvey announced that paris would host its fourth exposition universal from may 1889. alongside that it was announced that the capital would commission a 300-meter tower to stand alongside the sen but rather than design the tower themselves the government was throwing it open to a competition the news that any idiot could design paris's newest landmark hit architecture circles like a bomb 300 meters is still pretty massive but at the time it was nearly double the height of the then tallest man-made structure the washington monument whoever designed the new tower would become instantly famous they're building as iconic as the burj khalifa is today naturally this attracted all sorts of crackpots over the months of the competition designs are submitted for everything from a 300 meter watering can to appropriately a gigantic guillotine amid all of this madness one design stood out je bourde was perhaps paris's leading proponent of all that was traditional baroque and beautiful his proposal would be a stone tower of babel reaching into the heavens and topped with a beacon so powerful that people across the city would be able to read by its light after sunset it was a grand vision everything the third republic's government could have wanted in their new landmark the bordeaux's tower wasn't the only proposal in town out there amidst the city's cobbled lanes and sweeping boulevards another visionary was preparing his own design one so dramatic it would give julbarde a heart attack the visionary's name was gustaf ifel and he was about to put forward a plan that would transform paris [Music] if joule bordeaux was french architecture at his most classical and conservative gustav phil was the living embodiment of the new age born in dijon on december 15 1832 ifel had begun working with metal at university graduating with a determination to embrace the industrial style beginning in 1858 he'd made a killing building bridges starting with the passerelle ifell in bordeaux and reaching his pinnacle with portugal's ponte maria pierre a bridge that bears more than a passing resemblance to his famous tower the work had turned him into a millionaire and got him commissions doing stuff like creating the internal support system of the statue of liberty in short gustav fell in the 1880s was some hot even if he was a bit of a weird guy in private for example when looking for a wife he demanded his mother find him a good housekeeper who will not pester me too much who will cheat on me as little as possible and he will give me fine healthy children that will in fact be mine french truly is the language of love so odd home life aside he fell in 1884 was one of paris's most respected designers so when news of the tower competition broke his assistants got on it right away yes assistant despite giving his name to it gustaf iphel wasn't the actual designer of the eiffel tower what rather it was maurice caschlor emil nuggier and stefo suvestra who did all of the brainstorming and sketching if hell himself merely passed on recommendations and once they had a design to his liking he bought the rights to the plans still ifel was 100 behind his underling's design the simple industrial appearance the rejection of ornamentation it was the antithesis of everything jewel bourdain had proposed and that could only mean one thing a fight okay so here we are at the 1884 heavyweight design championships to decide the world's tallest structure in the red corner we have jewel bourdae who can build ornamental towers that people love but who hasn't convinced the judges that his 300-meter stone monster will be structurally sound the blue corner we have gustavel with a design so newfangled people are literally protesting in the streets but with a track record of building stuff that doesn't fall down that's a plus for him so who will win this clash of the titans well you already know the answer ifel was a master at pr when people accused him of wanting to build something ugly he responded that his tower's design was dictated by nature itself its lattice surface allowing it to withstand strong winds it was an early version of the modernist greedo that form follows function and it found favor with the judges on june 12 1886 he fell was announced the winner with the committee declaring the tower to be built for the 1889 exposition universal must clearly have a distinctive character and should be an original masterpiece only if phil's tower satisfies these requirements fully it was a grand victory from the former bridge builder the vindication that the industrial work it devoted his life to could be as beautiful as any number of bordea's stone designs unfortunately it was only after it won that hefel realized that the prize came with strings attached unwilling to risk public money in a depression the government would only put up a quarter of the costs of the new tower if help would have to pay for everything else out of his own pocket in the end ifelt agreed on one condition that all profits the tower turned in its projected 20-year lifespan went solely to him figuring this would allow ifall to break even or maybe even turn a small profit the committee agreed little could anyone have guessed just how insanely rich this contract would eventually make him now we'll give you a hard dollar amount in just a moment but first here's a quick word from today's video sponsor curiosity 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now you guys can use the promo code geographics to save 25 off the cost of an annual subscription which comes out as only 14.99 a year so click the link below or go to curiositystream forward slash geographic so 25 right now just 14.99 for the whole year and let's go back to paris [Music] the idea of a gigantic iron tower dominating a city skyline wasn't exactly new in 1886. way back in 1833 there have been attempts to make a gigantic iron monolith in england to commemorate the parliamentary reform bill more recently two american engineers had drawn up plans to do the same for 1876 for the philadelphia expo from the way parisians reacted though you'd think gustafel had come up with the idea solely as a way of taking a gigantic dump on their city the backlash to phil's winning design was swift and intense in the district surrounding the tower's proposed site people protested that it might fall over and crush their houses in paris fancy salons intellectuals sharpened their knives for a fell the author jory scarl house morse declared the design a whole riddled suppository morposaur branded it a high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders while leonbloy called it a truly tragic street lamp the son of the great writer alexander dumas protested its construction meanwhile luminaries from across paris joined into the committee of 300 one member for each meter of the tower's height the committee's speciality was attacking the tower in pamphlets and they did a great job check out this broadside even the commercial americans would not want this eiffel tower which is without any doubt a dishonor to paris heavy stuff well sadly this is just at the more acceptable end of the spectrum at the other end people started attacking you fell with anti-semitic slurs a pretty remarkable thing when you considered that he wasn't even jewish but hey that was just how the third republic rolled it was now less than a decade until the dreyfus affair and france was so rapidly anti-semitic that people's brains basically went i don't like this thing therefore it must be jewish stay classy history deeply upset eiffel tried to fight back saying he thought the tower would be beautiful and asking are we to believe that because a one is an engineer one is not preoccupied by beauty in one's constructions or that one does not seek to create elegance as well as solidity and durability but the arguments that had won over the judges barely made a dent in this wall of public opposition luckily though there was no time left for the government to change their mind ground was broken on january 26 1887 a little over two years before the exposition universal's official opening it was an impossibly tight deadline to build a record-breaking tower especially one that was meant to include restaurants and theaters and elevators but yvel had a trick up his sleeve as far back as 1884 his workshop had registered a patent for a new way of assembling metal supports for the tower two years before he actually won the competition since then his workers had been fine-tuning a plan for preparing everything in the company factory to be quickly shipped and assembled in as little time as possible when the starting gun on their great project was at last fired they were more than ready over the next 26 months over 7 300 tons of iron would be forged shipped and assembled in the heart of paris at the 19th century equivalent of warp speed it would take a workforce of up to 300 on site and another 150 at the factory all supported by some 50 designers and engineers when it was finally finished in record time it would leave even phil's enemies dazed with wonder in early 1889 a french journalist filed a report from the eiffel tower construction site a thick cloud of tar and coal smoke seized the throat and we were deafened by the din of metals screaming beneath the hammer with each blow came a shower sparks these black figures appearing larger than life against the background of the open sky looked as if they were reaping lightning bolts in the clouds in this short description we can already see the dominant feeling the eiffel tower would soon elicit in everyone who saw it or or in the face of something so vast so overwhelming it was a feeling that the city of paris had gotten used to over the last two years from the moment ground was broken almost everything about the eiffel tower's construction had been dizzying the underground supporting blocks dug below the level of the sen had required gigantic casings for keeping the water out the tower itself had been forged from 18 000 separate pieces some accuracy of a tenth of a millimeter joining them together were 2.5 million rivets each of which required a team of four men to heat it weld it and bash it into place in a cascade of sparks it was simply a building project beyond anything paris had ever seen before even just the wooden scaffolding and steam-powered cranes needed for the first floor were a sight to behold when the first level was reached just before christmas of 1887 parisians must have been like okay that's big enough you can stop now but of course if earl's project didn't stop it kept on growing and growing an iron skeleton rising higher and higher into the sky remember this is a world in which the tallest man-made structure in existence was the washington monument itself only recently completed and now here came ithel's tower not just surpassing its height but nearly doubling it growing so far up into the sky that it wouldn't be exceeded for another 40 years for the parisians in the late 1880s it must have felt like they were living in a modern babel the second floor of the tower was finished in 1888 about seven months later in march of 1889 the third floor was reached by april 1st that year the new york times is reporting that far from an eyesore if hell's new structure was light and graceful and not unworthy of paris even some of the anti-tower crowd were starting to admit that they'd been wrong that's if this really was a whole riddled suppository then it was a damn sight better than jewel bordai's giant stone hemorrhoid in the end the deadline was just too tight for ithal and his workers as the exposition threw its doors open on may 15 1889 they were still frantically putting the finishing touches on their tower working like man to get the elevators installed but even if the eiffel tower wasn't quite finished it was finished enough for visitors the very first day thousands flocked to paris's newest landmark paying to climb the hundreds of steps to the top for the rest of the expo it's estimated that an average of 12 000 people visited the tower each day there was no longer any denying it the eiffel tower was a hit a bona fide actual hit by the time the expo closed nearly six months later gustave fell and his creation would be famous not just in france not just in europe but across the whole damn world [Music] the 1889 exposition universal lasted to october the 31st in that time some 32 million visitors descended on paris generating the third republic a profit of 8 million francs in other words it was everything the organizers dreamed of the republicans and revolutionaries were happy the revolution centenary got a big party while the monarchists and bonapartists were able to just enjoy the fair itself even foreign nations swooned before the french celebrations despite britain refusing to recognize an exposition marking a revolution the future king edward vii still attended america meanwhile sent luminaries like thomas edison but what of the eiffel tower itself in the six odd months of the exposition it's estimated around 2 million people visited the eiffel tower on top of the millions more who simply admired it from afar one of the biggest draws was the view from the top with the wright brothers over a decade away from their first flight and hot air balloons still the preserve of the rich most parisians had simply never seen their city from so high up before perhaps sensing this gustafel had an office for himself installed on the top floor it was here before a panoramic view of paris that he met with edison yet it wasn't just the views that made the tower such a hit he fell out covered the iron skeleton with hundreds of gas lamps all of which lit up at night creating a burning silhouette on the horizon every morning a cannon was fired at the very top announcing the opening of the exposition on top of that there were performances held on the tower and themed restaurants opened for visitors one of the most frequent guests was guido morpassor who famously complained that the eiffel tower was the only place in paris that he could enjoy his lunch without having to look at the damn eiffel tower by the time the exposition closed its doors for the final time gustave fell had already broken even on his investment with the tower designed to stand for another 20 years it seemed obvious he was going to die a very very rich man unfortunately getting to that point was going to involve taking a very tortured route back in 1887 with his tower only just underway ifall had taken a contract to build locks for the new panama canal this isn't the panama canal you know the one you obviously watched our video on rather it was a french attempt under ferdinand de lesseps that began in 1880. unfortunately by the time ifel came on board the lesser said monumentally screwed up the project some 20 000 workers had died of tropical diseases and the finances were on the brink of collapse before ifalco could design a single lock they did collapse on february 4th 1889 just as if el was finishing his tower the french panama canal project imploded so much money was lost that everyone involved was indicted on fraud charges including a fell that meant the inventor spent the entire exposition what should have been the proudest moment of his life waiting to be summoned by the courts when at last the trial went ahead ifel was handed a two-year prison sentence for his part in the panama scheme although the sentence would be overturned on appeal the experience left him pretty traumatized in the aftermath he withdrew from the public eye devoted his life to science experiments it was while in this semi-exile that ifel began to formulate a plan a plan to save his grandest project to ensure it lasted long after he himself had passed away it was a plan that would ensure the eiffel tower remained standing to this very day since we've alluded to it a couple of times already you might now be wondering something like wait the eiffel tower was only meant to stand for 20 years how come it's still there well the answer to that is a single word radio as the deadline for the tower's destruction loomed gustafel desperately tried to prove its usefulness as a place for scientific experiments although we had some minor successes such as when theodore woolf first observed the effects of cosmic rays there the real breakthrough came in 1898. then november ujjen de crete established radio contact between the eiffel tower and the pantheon now the pantheon is only four kilometers away from the eiffel tower but it was the start of something big by 1899 the tower was capable of making radio contact with london an increase in signal distance of almost 100 times suddenly interested the french military asked captain gustav ferrier to look into these experiments further if elle himself made the tower completely available and even funded an antenna to aid the captain's work and this was a shrewd move by 1905 ferrier used the tower to establish radio contact with tunisia come 1908 his transmissions were beaming out over an incredible 6 000 kilometers through dumb luck ifel had found the perfect way to save his tower from destruction by turning it into a gigantic radio transmitter in 1909 just a few months before it was due to be torn down the military established a permanent listening station at the eiffel tower thanks to this the city permit for the tower was extended all the way until 1980. by the time that year rolled around paris without the eiffel tower would be as unthinkable as new york without the statue of liberty but that's not to say that our story ends here in 1909 with the tower finding a new lease of life there's one last anecdote to tell one more moment in history when paris's greatest landmark came within a hare's breadth of destruction the year was 1944 the year the allies liberated france from the nazi-backed fishy regime by now gustavel was long dead carried off on december 27 1923 at the age of 91 but his masterpiece was still as vibrant as ever over the previous decades the tower had done everything from intercept transmissions that helped uncover the german spy mata harry to function as a beacon to guide charles lindbergh to paris at the end of his record-breaking transatlantic flight it had become such a powerful symbol of france that adolf hitler had even been photographed in front of it in 1940 as a way of starkly conveying the french defeat now in 1944 with an allied victory at hand the eiffel tower was again on hitler's mind just before paris was liberated the fuhrer issued an order to destroy the city's greatest monuments among them was the tower which the nazi leader wanted reduced to twisted scrap metal given the destruction europe suffered in those years it's easy to imagine a world where this order was carried out where the eiffel tower ceased to exist in the summer of 1944 but thankfully that's not this world the nazi head of paris general dietrich von choltblitz refused the fuhrer's order it's said that he made up his mind while looking down at tullery garden and seeing the silhouette of castafell's tower standing in the distance the eiffel tower today may be synonymous with both paris and france as a whole but its existence should never be taken for granted in many parallel universes this iconic masterpiece no longer exists torn down blown up never to be seen in the first place we shouldn't forget how lucky we are to live in a universe where it is still standing as europe's greatest landmark and so i really hope you enjoyed today's video if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Geographics

Views: 141,841

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Id: VAqdXVHAZ-I

Length: 23min 48sec (1428 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 01 2021