A well-ordered life is like climbing a tower; the view halfway up is better than the view from the base, and it steadily becomes finer as the horizon expands.

...William Lyon Phelps quotes (American Educator, Journalist and Professor, 1865-1943)

I had got an opportunity to visit Eiffle Tower in 1998, when I was with FIAT. I am always fascinated by the towers. As I mentioned before, my father worked in Department of Telecommunication of India. From my childhood, I used to hear from him, how much effort and dedication to put to get one of them functional and have seen many towers in his different offices at different places of India. And I think, that’s how, I have grown my interest and fascination towards towers.

Imagine you are driving through a dark jungle road, suddenly just beside the left tree between the two big rocks you have noticed a tinny light, then you look carefully far at the horizon, on a dark small hill a red light getting on and off and you realize it’s coming from a tower. I am sure you will be flooded with lots of emotion…hey there is somebody over there …next thought probably how somebody erect a tower in this no man’s land…..what purpose it is serving, which kept it glowing.

From my father, I learned a lot about the microwave towers, how they facilitate the communication system before satellite and fiber optics technology took over, how to choose a right location to place them and also how much technical difficulty need to face and how much problem solving engineers need to do when they construct them at different places, working with different social, cultural and political hurdles. These were really very exiting stories, I’ll find another opportunity to tell them.

Then after I went to the Engineering College, we had to study two subjects : Applied Materials and Strength of Material, there we had to design towers. Then I realize the arrangement of trusses, which looks so beautiful when it stands, more than its artistic values it has an engineering necessity behind it and I also understood, how much mathematical calculations and creative thinkings are involved in each and every new tower design.

Now when we three friends from FIAT, Anup, Sawanth and me, reached close to Eiffle Tower though a side road, which was not the road tourists usually take, after walking about 3-4 miles and lost couple of times on the way, one of my friend lightly said “ Is it worth to take so much trouble to see this iron tower ? “ It was really not looking very impressive from that place and in the mental state where we were in. Then I reminded an ad used to come on television that time, casted by Manisha Koirala with the background of Eiffle tower, that had a beautiful landscape. So it might look beautiful from some other side, and its true we realized soon after.

Once I went to Meijer Sculpture Garden at Grand Rapids, Michigan in USA, that was a very nice experience too, and there, they truly said “You can appreciate a sculpture only with its landscape” that reminded me this incident of the Eiffle Tower.

Apart from its architectural marvel and artistic presentation on the heart of the Paris which suppose to be the city of Art and love, the more time we spend over there the more we were realizing the greatness of it.

The structure was built between 1887 and 1889. Three hundred workers joined together 18,038 pieces of puddled iron (a very pure form of structural iron), using two and a half million rivets, in a structural design by Maurice Koechlin. The risk of accident was great, for unlike modern skyscrapers the tower is an open frame without any intermediate floors except the two platforms. However, because Eiffel took safety precautions, including the use of movable stagings, guard-rails and screens, only one fatal accident happened during construction.

The metal structure of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tonnes while the entire structure including non-metal components is approximately 10,000 tonnes. Depending on the ambient temperature, the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to 18 cm (7.1 in) because of thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun. As demonstration of the economy of design, if the 7300 tonnes of the metal structure were melted down it would fill the 125 metre square base to a depth of only 6 cm (2.36 in), assuming a density of the metal to be 7.8 tonnes per cubic metre. The tower has a mass less than the mass of the air contained in a cylinder of the same dimensions, that is 324 metres high and 88.3 metres in radius. The weight of the tower is 10,100 tonnes compared to 10,265 tonnes of air.

At the time the tower was built many people were shocked by its daring shape. Eiffel was criticized for the design and accused of trying to create something artistic, or inartistic according to the viewer, without regard to engineering. Eiffel and his engineers, however, as renowned bridge builders, understood the importance of wind forces and knew that if they were going to build the tallest structure in the world they had to be certain it would withstand the wind.

In an interview reported in the newspaper Le Temps, Eiffel said:Now to what phenomenon did I give primary concern in designing the Tower? It was wind resistance. Well then! I hold that the curvature of the monument's four outer edges, which is as mathematical calculation dictated it should be,.. will give a great impression of strength and beauty, for it will reveal to the eyes of the observer the boldness of the design as a whole.

The shape of the tower was therefore determined by mathematical calculation involving wind resistance. Several theories of this mathematical calculation have been proposed over the years, the most recent is a nonlinear integral differential equation based on counterbalancing the wind pressure on any point on the tower with the tension between the construction elements at that point. That shape is exponential. A careful plot of the tower curvature however, reveals two different exponentials, the lower section having a stronger resistance to wind forces. The tower sways 6–7 cm (2–3 in) in the wind.

When we went at the top of it there was a wax statue of Eiffel with Thomas Elva Edison sharing some ideas. I was thrilled knowing such two great people share their times over there. It’s the same thrill I got when I first come to know that Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einestine spend some time and exchanged some greats thoughts from the point of view of their own world.

That visit of Effile tower is a golden memory of me......truly it’s a treasures collection over there. I went to see Tokyo Tower also after, people says its build from the inspiration of Eiffle tower, but that didn’t impress me that much, one of the reasons definitely, the landscape on which its standing, is no way comparable with the landscape of Eiffle tower....beside river seine, wide open beautifully maintained garden and at the heart of Paris, as I mentioned earlier : You can appreciate a sculpture only with its landscape.

Ref : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower

If you like the articles, please forward the website link to your other friends, if few more people read and likes it, my effort of writing will get some meaning.

Please don't forget to send your feedback to : partho.mridha@gmail.com