How to build the Eiffel Tower

January 31st, 02008 by Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander


Since we are hoping to build a monument of cultural significance, it was great to come across this wonderful collection of blueprints and process photos from the building of the Eiffel Tower in the 01880s. What is particularly inspiring is that they built it before widespread use of electricity, the telephone, and the automobile, making the technology used to build it little better than that of the ancient wonders (excepting steel of course).

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 02008 at 6:08 am and is filed under Clock of the Long Now, Long Term Art.

  • Camron Assadi

    Taschen publishes a great (and very large) coffee table book about the Eiffel Tower and its construction with many detailed images, drawings, and more called “La Tour De 300 Metres”: http://www.amazon.com/Tour-Eiffel-Bertrand-Lemoine/dp/382284148X

  • http://slesinsky.org/brian/ Brian Slesinsky

    Here’s another web page:

    http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/documentation/dossiers/page/construction.html

    It’s built out of puddle iron, not steel, according to Wikipedia.

  • http://www.kendrabradleythomas.piczo.com Kendra Thomas

    Thank-You for making this site because we are getting really good anwsers off of her that will help us with or assignment. Once again..
    Thank-You

  • Courtney

    hey this site is cool yo. its the bomb

  • Tim

    To say that the technology used to build the tower is “little better than that of the ancient wonders” is misleading. In the 1880s, despite the fact that electricity wasn’t in widespread use, there *was* widespread use of steam power for heavy industry. For building the tower, steam powered cranes were fitted on the tower during construction to hoist building materials to the top. These were a huge improvement over ancient methods.

    Mr. Slesinsky is correct that “La Tour Eiffel” is not built with steel, but with wrought iron, of a variety called puddle iron which was common at that time. Steel has actually been around for thousands of years, but it’s widespread use as a building material did not occur until Bessemer patented a process to produce it cheaply in large quantities in 1855. Even then, wrought iron could be produced at a comparable cost for many years. It may be that this was a blessing in disguise; if steel had been cheaper in Monsieur Eiffel’s time, he might have used it instead of iron. Since wrought iron is much more resistant to corrosion than steel, the tower may not have lasted as well as it has to the current day.

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