The $64M Race to Save the Eiffel Tower

the Eiffel Tower is in danger The Landmark has survived an occupation two world wars and the prospect of demolition back in 1903 but all of those threats pale in comparison to the tower's greatest enemy rust for more than a century this iconic Monument has been fighting an uphill battle against the Wind and Rain of Paris a battle that it might now be losing this is the $64 million fight to save leave the Eiffel Tower so the Eiffel Tower was never supposed to be standing for this long it was meant as a temporary Monument for the

1889 World's Fair to rise over Paris for just 20 years before being torn down now 135 years later it's not only Still Standing but has cemented itself as one of the most beloved and iconic structures in the world world but the tower is starting to show its age the famous Baris landmark and the symol of love the Eiffel Tower is crumbling and the only solution to stop its DEC is a full renovation ideally the tower was meant to be repainted every 7 years but the last restoration effort was delayed thanks to the pandemic now it's

in the middle of A $64 million repaint to make it presentable for the 2024 Paris Olympics however some experts have criticized this repaint as being little more than a cosmetic touchup which doesn't address the advanced state of Russ the tower is now in in a confidential report leaked to French magazine maranne one unnamed manager said that if Gustav Eiffel the engineer behind the tower had visited it today he'd have had a heart attack now Gustav Eiffel actually anticipated that rust would be a problem for this Tower and he put in place plans to cope with

it but first he had to convince parisians not to tear it down together it's the80s not those 80s the 1880s Paris was set to host the World's Fair at the end of the decades and the city needed something spectacular it was to be the centinary of the French Revolution and Paris wants to show off the engineering skill of the French people well engineering was was really on steroids in the late 19th century and the French called it labell Epoch so confidence was high um progress was embraced and and I guess personal and corporate National wealth

was also growing they seemingly you know for a while Engineers almost could do anything that was asked of them Gustav Eiffel won a competition to design a glistering new monument with his plan for a 1,000 ft tower that was to be by far the tallest man-made structure on Earth it would handly beat the then current tourist the Washington Monument and actually before that the tallest structures in the world were all churches and the pyramids EI to was was special because it was by some considerable margin the tallest man-made structure in the world at the time

it was 1,000 ft High when completed 300 M and retained that position as the tallest man-made structure for 40 years while Eiffel is now synonymous with the tower that takes his name he was was also one of the greatest engineering minds of the 19th century among his many achievements were the Porto Viaduct and the Statue of Liberty his initial designs for the Eiffel Tower took his engineering Concepts to incredible New Heights the first challenge was figuring out how to build something that tall that wasn't also impossibly heavy when the Washington Monument was being built it

kept sinking into the ground because of the enormous weight of all the marble and granite it's formed from rifel solved this problem by making his tower out of iron a lightweight but strong material it looked quite literally like something from a Jules ver novel a large pylon with four columns made of ltis work girders that met at the top to make it more palatable to the general public architect Steven sylvestra was brought on board to tidy up the design he gave us the stonework legs The Arches that link The Columns with the first levels and

the bulblike crown at the top the first thing to to point out is that the the original concept for the Eiffel to was not gustaff Eiffel himself it was two of his employees uh Maurice klin and Emil nugi and they they they worked in their own time and prepared designs for this idea that they had for the 1889 Exposition and they showed their drawings to Gustav uh Sylvester was asked to improve the aesthetic of what they had come up with as engineer ing solutions to a very tall tower because nothing like this had ever been

built before eiel had to take special consideration of the enormous wind pressures the tower would face at varying Heights the wind resistance is a really neat feature of uhl's approach to the design and the analogies with great trees like Great Oaks where and or sequ where the trunk gets progressively broader and broader as it gets to the root system the distinctive curves are the product of eiffel's mathematical equations to create the most wind resistant form if the tower had been built as a simple straight line it would have wobbled dangerously back and forth this design

tricks the wind into traveling downwards the ltis structure also evenly distributes loads across the framework so that when high winds do hit it remains stable today those calculations would be tested out with models on computers well before the tower was constructed but back then Eiffel only had his theories they were gambling 2 years of work and the modern equivalency of 37 million the pressure was immense construction began on July 1st 1887 while the Washington Monument took several decades to build the Eiffel Tower took just 22 months but it was really cleverly built it was efficiently

built in only 2 years which is quite impressive and had a fairly small Workforce of a few 200 only steel workers and then teams of painters of course and Eiffel used some really smart techniques for cranage uh that was designed to climb the sides of the tower on lift rails as progressively the tower emerged and got higher and higher but the structure wasn't built where it is today every part of it was made in eiffel's factories on the outskirts of Paris all 18,000 pieces were then taken to the Shaner M and assembled to an accuracy

of a tenth of a millimeter like a giant Lego set at one point there were up to 300 workers on sight using small steam cranes and Scaffolding to build the Tower more than 2.5 million rivets would hold it all together then on December 7th 1887 all four of the girders met in the middle and began their vertical Ascent upwards racing into the sky finally it was given four coats of of red Le paint that's right the Eiffel Tower once more closely resembled the Golden Gate Bridge than the bronze structure it is today the tallest tower

on Earth and a wonder of the modern world was then marked complete and the French absolutely hated it parisians are not known for their restraint when it comes to handing out critiques it is after all a French word the tower was labeled a truly tragic Street Lamp a half-built factory pipe and incomplete confused and deformed to his credit Gustav Eiffel worked tirelessly to defend his structure he asked his the tractors could there not be beauty within his engineering Marvel public opinion was I think a different story and that was steadily improving as the tower was

growing by the time it opened in 1879 it had 2 million visitors in the first 6 months now that doesn't suggest it was an unwelcome imposition on the know general parisians or visitors to the to the exposition so it very very quickly became a worldwide icon the tower was set to be torn down in 20 short years and in 1903 plans for demolition were seriously considered to try and save the Tower Eiffel funded several scientific uses for it ranging from meteorological observations to wireless telegraphy it even became of particular military interest when they found it

could transmit and receive long-distance signals all of these efforts ultimately helped to save the tower and even to this day it plays a vital role in television and radio broadcasts now after Decades of hard work all Eiffel could hope for was that future Generations would take care of his monuments as well as he had a series of reports over the last few years have turned up some troubling results one in 2010 urged the operating company for the tower to come up with a completely new maintenance policy one in 2014 found cracks and rusting throughout the

structure and that only 10% of the new paint was actually ad Dearing to the tower another in 2016 showed there were 885 faults including 68 that posed serious risks to its durability a third of the tower was set to be stripped and have two new coats applied but thanks to delays caused by the pandemic and worrying levels of lead in the old paint only 5% of the Tower is now being treated unfortunately experts are warning that this $64 million repaint could actually make defects in the existing layer of paint worse resulting in more corrosion while

the operating company is nervous to close the tower for any extended periods of time you see the Eiffel Tower attracts some 7 million visitors and brings in nearly 100 million EUR of Revenue every year and unfortunately the operating costs can often exceed that number painting the tower is no easy task and it's done in much the same way as it was 135 years ago with scaffolding or painters ABS sailing off the side of the structure they strip clean and apply rust proofing before adding a final coat of paint the tower is built using puddle iron

in theory a material that could last forever as long as it's maintains and prevented from rusting if this multi-million dollar repaint proves to be just a Band-Aid then it's going to be up to Future parisians to ensure the Integrity of the monument the Eiffel Tower is one of those rare structures that has transcended the rivets and bolts it's made of it's more than just an observation structure or antenna or a glitzy Monument for a long ago exhibition it's one of the most recognizable buildings in the world in that way Gustav Eiffel has ended up having

the last laugh against all of his critics he was right there is an astounding and Timeless Beauty in his engineering E I would be absolutely delighted that the tower is still there after all these years and uh would would feel also partly Vindicated that his his his life left a an uring Legacy that now now not just parisians but the world uh loves and would be greatly greatly saddened if if there ever came a time when the the tower had to be demolished for safety reasons don't forget that we're inspiring the next generation of Builders

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