JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Earlier in this blog I wrote a bit called “Dreaming of the 10-Ton Eiffel Tower Bullet, 1891” which was about the massive free-fall bullet ride that was to be part of an Eiffel Tower entertainment package–the apparatus wasn’t built, which was probably a good thing, what with dropping 20 people in a steel bullet from 900′ feet not being such a brilliant idea1. The Eiffel Tower had been built a few years before for the 1889 world’s fair in Paris to mixed reviews–actually there was a call for its deconstruction post-fair because so many people found it so confounding/unappealing. The Columbian Expo’s greatest “response” to the Eiffel Tower and the not-building-another-one was probably the 264′ Ferris wheel–it was very popular, and after the fair it was dismantled and moved to another location in Chicago in 1895, and then disassembled again and moved for use in the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904–after that it was ingloriously retired and sold for scrap (for $1800).
This all came up just now because in browsing the 1892 volume of Scientific American I bumped into this drawing of a proposed exhibit/attraction for Chicago–an observation tower with a “slide”. Folks would be hauled up to the deck at the top, after which they would be loaded onto a car (descent controlled by air brakes) and sent back down on a 5o grade. There’s no help in the article or drawing to determine just how massive this structure was supposed to be, though it looks very substantial, hundreds of feet tall. Given that the new form of building at this time was the skyscraper and that the only thing to make the skyscraper practicable was an elevator, this was probably a good advertisement/display/p.r. stunt for the machine–even more so for the brakes on the sledges and the elevator, because you really can’t have tall buildings without elevators, and you can’t have elevators without good brakes.
Notes:
- (Check out this link for a fuller story on this bizarre and probably fatal idea https://historyofideasblog.com/thesciencebookstore/2011/11/dreaming-of-the-10-ton-eiffel-tower-luxury-bullett-addendum.html )