February 6, 2019 • 33 mins
The second part of our look at Gustave Eiffel's life picks up just after he closed down all business interests in South America, and leads into some of his most famous work, including the Statue of Liberty and the Parisian tower that bears his name.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. As we
have been saying a lot, because we're into it and
it's exciting and we want you along with us. We
(00:21):
are going to Paris this summer is so exciting. So
in early June, we are jaunting off Paris UH to
do a fun trip where we're gonna explore a lot
of the places that were important during the French Revolution.
And you two can come along with us. Uh. If
you are interested in checking that out, you can go
to our website missed in History dot com. Look at
(00:43):
the menu bar at the top of the page. One
of your options to click on says Paris trip exclamation
point uh. And if you do that, you will be
passed through to the website that will handle bookings. You
can check it out see where all we're gonna go
and the fun things we're gonna do. Uh. And if
that is for you, you you can come this and we
will all laugh and laugh and laugh. And like I've
said before, I will cry at many things because I
(01:06):
find things like museums in historical places, very moving. One
of my friends has noted that a lot of pictures
on the website where the bookings are happening are of food,
and yes, we also plan to enjoy a whole lot
of French food. Oh yes, I'm already like scouting out
restaurants to take my husband on a date while we're there.
(01:26):
So this is the second of a two parter about
Gustava Fell. So I suggest you listen to the first
one first before this, or this might feel abrupt and
you may not appreciate the journey he went on to
become the the iconic builder that he ended up being.
And we talked, as I said in the part one,
about Gestava Feld's early years, and that leads straight into
(01:48):
today's show, in which we were going to talk about
some of his most famous works. So just as a
quick link up, as you'll recall if you listen to
that first part. When we close that out, the employee
that he had trusted to be his representative in Latin
America and South America died. NFL had made the decision
to completely pull out of his overseas business. As the
Fell's work ended in South America, there were larger contracts
(02:11):
coming in in Europe. First, in eighteen seventy five, Fel
was tasked with creating a new terminus building for the
Austrian Railways station at Pest, Hungary that's now Budapest. It
was a three million franc project and the new building
was constructed around the old one to avoid a service disruption.
(02:31):
When the news station was nearing completion, the old one
inside of it was demolished and then the last phase
of construction was completed. One of the big stands that
it Fell took in this design was asserting that the
structural elements of the building should not be hidden, but
should be incorporated into the design. He felt like his
plans for the station quote carefully brought out the role
(02:54):
in the nature of the various materials as clearly as possible. Yeah,
he had ly championed iron work as an important structural
material and he thought like, why are we hiding it?
It's making our building stronger, or we could we could
make this part of the design. Uh. And just a
few months after the project for the station at Pest
(03:15):
was contracted, a Fells firm one another large contract, this
one in Portugal, and the competition for this bridge project
for the Portuguese Railway Company had been fierce. Several other
European companies had submitted proposals, and it would be a
boon to whoever secured that contract. The design by it
Fels partner too Phil Seig, which featured a large trust
(03:39):
parabolic arch, was also the lowest bid and it gained
the favor of the railroad with only minor modifications. It
was built exactly to plan, which was incredibly demanding. Because
of the river's conditions and the tight budget that they
had proposed it, Fell and his team were able to
cut costs, not by cutting corners, but by innovating. I
Fel came up with a way to support the arch
(04:01):
segments with cables building from each side inward, instead of
having to build a scaffolding in the river, which would
have driven up the expense. That bridge, the Maria Pia Bridge,
was completed in less than two years and it still stands,
although it's no longer in use, was made a National
Monument of Portugal in Yeah, it's quite lovely. There's some
(04:22):
great pictures of it online if you care to go looking.
But though the project went well, there was some unease
for Gustava fell. For one, he and Seig had started
bickering over whether it fl could hire his brother in
law again. He had hired his brother in law on
a previous job, and he wanted to do so again
and say Rigg wasn't into it. Uh. And for another,
(04:43):
he seemed to really miss his family, and he actually
asked his wife, Marguerite, and their youngest child to move
to Portugal for the duration of the project. That was
something he had never done before. But Marguerite got sick.
She had experienced several bouts with pneumonia, and she became
very ill while living in Portugal. She traveled back to
Paris for treatment, but died in eighteen seventy seven at
(05:05):
the age of thirty two before the bridge was finished.
Gustave's sister, Marie and her husband Dr. Albert Hinok, who
she married a year after her first husband died, helped
him raise his children after Marguerite's death. But that wasn't
the only tragedy that came his way in the late
eighteen seventies. His mother also died in February of eighteen
seventy eight, so in the span of just a few months,
(05:28):
he lost two of the most important people in his life.
After the bridge was completed, Sarah wrote a paper about
its success and presented it at the French Society of Engineers.
While a Fell had been open about his part in
the project as well as another engineer, once SARAHI seemed
to want to take full credit for the successful bridge
(05:48):
for himself, I Fell became really irritated. He wrote his
own paper about the work, downplaying his partner's contribution. By
eighteen seventy nine, the relationship between the two of them
had completely so word and their partnership was ended. Yeah,
this is a thing that comes up a lot in
sort of criticism of Gustava Fell. There are some questions
about whether or not he was ever really very magnanimous
(06:11):
about letting other people have their time in the spotlight
on things they had collaborated on. So in this case
it is a little bit like some people will point
to this as a moment of like his his pride
becoming the problem. But once the dust had settled from
this disagreement, a Fell actually changed the name of his
firm to company destabisiment if sareg actually attempted to get
(06:36):
a portion of the company's assets, which he felt he
was entitled to remember, he had put in a greater
portion of capital when they first started the company, and
he went after what he thought was his fair sharing
court and this led to a legal battle that dragged
on for twelve long years. Eventually, Sarah was granted a
(06:57):
payment worth four times his initial investment with A Fell,
but that was it uh in terms of how much
the company had grown during that time. That seemed a
little insulting and it was considered a loss. In the
midst of this strife, it Fell was also involved in
another legal matter, although this one was a lot less contentious.
He had been going by it Fell, but his family
(07:18):
name legally was still hyphenated, so in eighteen eighty Gustav
legally had the family names changed from Bonchazen Fell to
simply Fell. Yeah, when his great great grandfather had moved
from Germany to France, he had done the hyphen nation
on the name, and then they had really gone by
a Fel for most of the time, so he was like,
let's just strike that and this will be our legal name.
(07:39):
In eighteen eighty fl began construction on the Viaduct of Garabee,
and this was a massive structure. It actually had a
similar design to the Maria Pia Bridge with a Trust
parabolic arch, but this bridge was much larger, and at
this point Gustava Fell had become so well respected that
he was really the only engineer that was seriously considered
for this channel lenging project. It was not put out
(08:02):
to bids the way most projects would be. They literally
were like, the only person who can build this is
Gustava Fell. It was immediately after this contract was in
place that a Fell formally and legally severed all of
his ties with his former partners Serig. This was also
a project that required pre setting the build site with
essentially a many town for the workers because the bridge
(08:23):
was in a pretty remote and undeveloped area. Because the
build was expected to last for a few years, provisions
had to be made for the workers to move with
their families if they wanted. Everything from living spaces to
retail stores that could provide the necessities to schools all
had to be built for the construction on the bridge
could even start, and as he had done throughout his career,
(08:45):
Gustava Fell rose to meet these challenges. The viaduct, which
included more than twenty six tons of iron in its
construction and cost roughly three million francs. Was completed at
the end of eight four. Accomplishing such a mass of
goal made it Fell famous. He was already well known
in construction, but this really kind of made him famous
(09:06):
throughout the country and even in in throughout Europe. As
you recall, this happened in Portugal, and it was sort
of part of the reason that he got his nickname,
which was the Magician du Feri or the iron Magician.
And sometimes you'll also see this translated as the iron Wizard.
I like that one better, but it's just me Iron Wizard.
It's fun. It makes me picture him in a pointy
(09:27):
hat with stars on it. Kind of uh, fantagious sty
he's making little iron uh little iron Tory Fell there
walking in in a row. Okay, we're about to talk
about a famous structure that gestap it Fell contributed to
(09:48):
that's here in the US. But first wee will take
a quick break to hear about one of those sponsors.
He was keeping this show going while Fels Firm continued
to work steadily. The next high profile job that he
worked on was actually the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the
(10:10):
World that was the original title for that piece, even
though we these days just called the Statue of Liberty.
Eduard Rene Le Fabre had initiated the idea of a
gift to the United States shortly after the Lincoln assassination
in eighteen sixty five, but this project took years to
really get momentum uh and get to the point where
(10:32):
they could send sculptor Frederic August Berteldi to the US
to survey the possibilities and come up with a design.
This statue is often cited as a gift of the
French government to the United States, but it was actually
not from the government. It was funded by private donors,
the people of France, who all gave their money so
that they could share this moment of of sort of
(10:54):
brotherhood and support, the only exception being a fairly sizable
donation from the city of Paris. Architect Eugene violet Le
Duc initially started work on the engineering of the structure,
and with his guidance, the head had been completed in
time to be displayed at the eighteen seventy eight Exposition Universe,
But Violet l Duke died in the fall of eighteen
(11:17):
seventy nine and it was Gustave it Fell that was
the replacement. It Fell developed a skeletal support plan for
this massive sculpture and designed the stairwells within so the
observation area would be easy to reach, and because the
statute was going to be so very exposed when it
was installed in New York, Fell took great care to
plant with an eye towards stability, even inforceful wind gusts.
(11:42):
So the copper sheeting that's used on it, each piece
is anchored to the interior framework. None of those sheets
are simply riveted to an adjacent sheet or sheets uh
and none of the sheets are load bearing in any way.
As we mentioned in our Emma Lazarous episode, there were
some issues with putting together the financial capital on the
U S side of things to complete the pedestal where
(12:03):
Lady Liberty would eventually stand. As a consequence, the team
working on the statue in France slowed down their production
rate towards the end of the build, while the United
States worked to raise the money to finish their construction.
But eventually, everything, of course did come together, and just
as he had done with a number of his projects
that he had shipped to South America, Fell, along with
(12:23):
berthel D and their teams, took the Statue of Liberty,
which they had built in its entirety apart, breaking it
down into three hundred and fifty component pieces for shipping,
and then those pieces were packed into two hundred and
fourteen custom crates loaded on a ship which left France
on May eighty five. It took a little less than
a month to make it to New York. That ship
(12:45):
arrived on June seventeenth, and after months of unpacking an assembly,
the statue was finally fully assembled in April eighteen eighty six.
The dedication ceremony for it was held on October twenty
of that same year. As Gstava Fell had been working
on the iconic French gift to the United States, another
project was starting to take root. In the early eighteen eighties,
(13:06):
plans began for another Paris Exposition Universal, this time to
align with the hundredth anniversary of the start of the
French Revolution. By the time things really started to get
organized for the event, it was already eighteen eighty six,
so the clock was ticking for an eighteen eighty nine
expo to be put together. Yeah, that's a little tight Yeah,
(13:28):
people had been working on it up to that point,
but they didn't really have all their pieces in place
to be like, now we have a full planning committee,
let's make this thing happen. And it sounds like ample
time for something on a smaller scale, but not something
as massive as these expositions were. Yeah, and exactly when
the idea of a tower as the centerpiece of this
show came into being is a little bit fuzzy. But
(13:51):
in May eighty six, an announcement was published in the
Government paper asking for submissions of ideas to build an
iron tower for the X. There were specific needs included
in this announcement. It had to be built on the
Chendo Mao, and it had to be three hundred meters
tall with a one twenty five square footprint, and all
(14:12):
submissions had to be submitted within sixteen days of this announcement,
so they only had two weeks in a tiny bit
of change to get their designs made, drafted, and submitted.
If those requirements seemed very very specific, it's because they were.
They perfectly matched a design that it Fell had ready
to go. Two of his engineers, Maurice cook Lan and
(14:35):
Emil Newgate, had already been working on the tower design
along with architects Defend Silvestra. Their earliest sketches of it
date back to eighteen eighty four, two years before the
Minister of Science and Industry published this call for submissions.
It was absolutely no surprise that among the one hundred
(14:55):
submissions for the tower contract was a design from a
Fell's firm. Were actually more submissions than that. That was
like the narrowed down these are the serious ones. After
a month of analysis of these various proposals, it was
determined that only a Fell's team had a workable design,
and initially uh Gustava Fell himself had not been especially
(15:16):
wowed with the ideas of Cookland and Neuguie, but he
encouraged him to keep going Usially, yeah, sure, keep working
on that, and once uh Sylvesta got involved, he kind
of liked where it was headed. But as he realized
what a feat this tower would be if it came
to fruition, he actually bought out the patent rights from
(15:37):
the other three men on the design, and in the
terms of their deal, their names would always remain connected
to the project because there was going to be some
prestige if it got accepted and they would each get
one percent of the estimated cost to build it. So, ultimately,
in a move that could be interpreted as very astute
or a very selfish or maybe both, I felt signed
(15:59):
the contracts not as his company but on behalf of
himself alone. Taking ownership in this way also gave f
L rights to income from tower tourism long after the
expo was over. He later asserted that he had only
wanted to take ownership quotes to assume company responsibility for
the enterprise and to devote to its realization efforts, which
(16:19):
I certainly didn't believe at the time would be onerous.
And it is true that had the men pursued submitting
the designs on their own, they wouldn't have had the
same means to build it if it had been accepted
without the f L name and the associated resources that
came with it. Yeah, this is another one of those
times I mentioned in the first episode that he sometimes
(16:40):
gets criticized as being kind of selfish, not very good
about sharing credit, and wanting to kind of be the
star of the show in regards to some of these projects. Uh,
he claims that it was completely magnanimous. He really thought like, no,
let me own it, and that way I will have
all of the resources to build it, and I will
take all the risk, and you're names will still be attached.
(17:01):
But it's legally and financially all on me. But other
people are like, no, dude, you wanted all the credit.
Also in eight six, Gustav's eldest daughter, Claire, got married.
She married a man named Adolph Salle, and this was
actually a huge boon to their family because sal became
one of a Fell's closest friends and collaborators, so he
(17:22):
maintained that close knit family that he had had from
the time he was a child. And one of those
little tidbits that you hear a lot of times and like,
uh fun facts about Paris kinds of articles on the internet.
The design style for this tower was not greeted with
universal enthusiasm. It was driven entirely by the needs of
the structure. There was no attempts to cover up the
(17:43):
iron work with masonry, and the lines of it were
determined mathematically to be the angles and positions of supports
required to sustain the desired height, which was to be
the tallest building in the world. Yeah, there were also
people like what is this tower for nothing? Just to
begin good? And it seemed kind of wasteful and silly
(18:04):
to some people to just build a tower for the
sake of building a tall thing. But this idea to
promote and showcase the materials of industrial modern design at
the time deeply offended a lot of Paris's art community.
A group called the Committee of three hundred, referencing the
three hundreds of height for the proposed tower, actually submitted
a petition to the Minister of Works condemning the design
(18:26):
and insisting that it was going to mar the beauty
of Paris if it were built a Fell's tower would
they felt being affront to the very ideals of France,
and they called it useless and a monstrosity. For his part,
Gustav defended the tower and asserted that there was plenty
of art and good design, and that there was no
reason the French shouldn't become just as renowned for their
(18:48):
engineering prowess as they had for their artistry and other fields.
He famously argued that the pyramids at Giza were nothing
more than artificial mountains, and yet they became some of
the most revered structures on Earth. Yeah, that's another thing
that people sometimes point to you and go, ma'am, that's
some ego to be like, know, what I'm building is
(19:08):
like the pyramids, you guys. Um. But he was right, uh,
eventually so despite the detractors. Though construction did begin in
January seven, and throughout the next two years of the
build Fel and his critics continued to trade barbs even
after it was completed. The complaints continued for a bit.
(19:30):
Writer Guie de Montisson, who had been one of the
men who spearheaded the petition committee, allegedly ate lunch in
the restaurant at the base of the structure every day
because he claimed that was the only place that he
could eat where he would not be seeing a Fel's eyesore.
You just have to see it the whole time you're
going there. Well, he claimed that there was. He wasn't
safe anywhere in Paris, Like everywhere he went he just
(19:52):
saw this horrible thing he hated. So at least if
he was in the horrible thing he hated, he wasn't
looking at it. We will get to some of the
specifics of the exposition and Universal Tower in just a minute,
but first we will take a quick sponsor break. The effort,
(20:15):
manpower and material needed to build the tower was of
course startling. Like I said, this could be a whole
episode on its own. We're kind of giving you the
speedy version. But more than fifty engineers and designers had
a hand in creating more than five thousand designed sketches
that detailed every single aspect of the tower. A hundred
and fifty workers at a Fell's factory at Levare manufactured
(20:39):
the needed pieces, which were then carted to the Schende
Mar and assembled by work site crews that ranged from
a hundred and fifty to three hundred men. Building on
the lessons that it Fell learned while working on a
statue of Liberty, he made sure that the tower for
the Expo and universal could withstand wind. The Tory Fell
can sway as much as six inches at the top
(20:59):
and as does sind to handle that movement. Yet also
you'll see a factoid sometimes that it bends slightly in
the sun and it can just rebounds back from that.
And one of the interesting aspects of how the tower
was assembled, at least to me, was its riveting process.
There's a great description of it on the torfl official
website that describes it. I'm just going to read what
(21:20):
they wrote because they'll do it better than if I
try to parse it and rewrite it. And that reads
quote first. The pieces were assembled in the factory using bolts,
later to be replaced one by one with thermally assembled rivets,
which contracted during cooling, thus ensuring a very tight fit.
A team of four men was needed for each rivet assembled,
one to heat it up, another to hold it in place,
(21:42):
a third to shape the head, and a force to
beat it with a sledge hammer. Only a third of
the two point five million rivets used in the construction
of the tower were inserted directly on site. When the
tower was completed, it was an almost instant popular success.
Almost two million people visit did the tower, which served
as the gateway to the exposition, and for the first
(22:04):
time the Exposition Universal made rather than lost money. Yeah,
that was always like not a not a profitable enterprise,
Like they were basically putting it on to show off
all of the many fabulous things that France could do.
This was similarly a problem in other places that have
had World's Fairs, but fundamentally they're kind of money pits.
(22:26):
But this one so many people showed up just to
see the tower that had been so controversial that they
ended up making money. And as the public and indeed
the world marveled at what Gustavo Fel had pulled off,
criticism from the art community kind of died down. But
fl found himself, unfortunately, in a whole other sort of trouble,
right on the heels of his eighteen eighty nine exposition success.
(22:49):
In eight seven, while working at his now famous tower,
fl had agreed to build one of the locks in
the Panama Canal that put him in business with Ferdinand
de Lesseps, who we mentioned on the first part of
this two parter. And by the way, for Bravo fans
in the crowd, yes that's the same family. Yes, those
of you that didn't get that ignored it's not important,
(23:11):
but there is a Dela SEPs involved in one of
the Bravo shows. Yes, related to Ferdinand. I'm gonna say
I said that, and I don't know. Uh So to
set the stage on why this was a problem, we
actually have to go back a little bit to eighteen
seventy nine, when Della SEPs became president of the company
Universal du Canal in eighteen eighty shares of that company
(23:35):
were offered to the public as a way to drum
up funding to build this canal, and delas EPs was
hoping to once again find the success that he had
achieved with the Suez Canal with this venture, which would
excavate a ship canal along the narrow isthmus of Panama.
But the whole enterprise was a huge and tragic failure.
Dela SEPs had not managed things well. He had really
(23:58):
not studied historical exploration of the area, which revealed it
to be exceedingly unwelcoming. He also had only made personal
visits to the area during the dry season and had
no sense of the dangers of the rainy season. Twenty
thousand men died while working on the canal, due primarily
to malaria and yellow fever. Even as men were dying
(24:20):
in large numbers in Panama, Delisps was recruiting new workers
in France. Yes, so there was just some one ignorance,
kind of willful ignorance in the mix, and to just
some kind of gross behavior of like, ah, lots of
people are dying, I better go get more guys and
not really tell them how dangerous this whole thing is
And in addition to that very tragic human cost, there
(24:43):
was also a very real financial loss in the venture
as well. Approximately two hundred and fifty million dollars it's
about a half billion francs at the time were sunk
into this ultimately failed project, and when it ran out
of money, all of those investors who had contributed to
the project were left with no way to get their
money back. So there were some people who believed in this,
(25:03):
spent their life savings to try to be part of it,
and then we're left destitute. The whole enterprise became a
huge scandal, and Gustava Fell was in the middle of it.
He had initially been against the project, which de la
SEPs had conceived without locks. It wasn't until the addition
of a lock system that if L had gotten involved.
And just like Ferdinand del SEPs and his son Charles,
(25:25):
Gustava Fell was charged with fraud for his involvement in
the mismanaged canal project, even though he had not been
part of that business administration side in he was actually
sentenced to two years in prison and he was also fined,
but that verdict was overturned by a higher court. But
even though at that point he had cleared his record,
(25:45):
he just felt as though his name as a builder
was tainted forever due to the extensive coverage that this
whole scandal had gotten in the press for years. At
that point, it Fell withdrew from his firm and it
was renamed Lass Society Dick Construction leve Valois Parae. At
that point, Maurice Coklan, one of the engineers who had
originally conceived of the tower that made a Fel famous,
(26:07):
took over as managing director of the company. But Gustava
Fell did not retire to an idle life. He merely
switched gears and began a second career in science. He
started conducting his own research with the intention that he
was going to share any of his findings freely, and
in eight he started conducting experiments at his famed tower.
(26:28):
As part of the construction agreement that it Fell had
signed to build the tower, he paid for a significant
amount of its cost, and in return he was entitled
to money made from the visitors for twenty years. After that,
the city government would take full possession of the structure,
and the intent was that it would be taken down
at that point. But by the late eighteen nineties the
engineer turned research scientists had added an antenna to the
(26:51):
tower and was running wireless telegraph experiments there. And as
a consequence of this work, which was seen for its
value immediately, particularly for milly Harry applications, the city extended
the concession to a Fell to continue his work. So
he basically retained that same agreement on the tower uh
for a much longer period of time, and the tower,
(27:11):
of course was never disassembled as had originally been planned,
since we were talking about it, because we are going
to go see it in a couple of months. In
addition to the telegraph and radio transmissions, I Fell began
investigating aerodynamics, which he had become fascinated by while working
on the Statue of Liberty. He built a wind tunnel
(27:31):
at the tower in nineteen o nine and an aero
dynamics laboratory in nineteen twelve and another part of the
city where he could do even larger wind tunnel experiments
and in his lab at a toy a. Fel used
model aircraft in his larger wind tunnel to study the
optimal designs of things like propeller thrust and speed and
angle of inclination and air resistance, and his work there
(27:53):
also contributed to missile design and how bombs were released.
His work directly impacted the aircraft that France used in
the First World War and established new levels of knowledge
in aircraft science. I have actually seen some people comment
that he really should be just as well known for
his work in aircraft engineering as he is for having
(28:13):
built this iconic tower. But u that doesn't get talked
about very often. But for all this work in the
Smithsonian Institution awarded him the Langley Gold Medal. Just as
he had been in engineering bridges and other structures, Fell
was meticulous in his calculations and measurements in aerodynamics, which
Alexander Graham Bell said, quote have given engineers the data
(28:36):
for designing and constructing flying machines upon sound scientific principles.
Fel designed a fighter plane in nineteen seventeen, and his designs,
which he distributed without any renumeration, were used to build
two prototypes by the company that would eventually evolve into
Air France. Those designs were eventually abandoned, though in nineteen
(28:57):
twenty Gestava Fell actually retired uh he was in his
eighties at that point. And he spent much of his
time in the mansion that he had built for his
entire family on the Rue Rebelais, and he wrote his
memoirs during this time, but he did not have any
intention to publish them. He just wanted the family to
have a record of his life and work. And he
had this very unique experience. We often talk about people
(29:19):
not getting to know how important their work was while
they were alive, but he had a sense while he
was still alive of the impact that his work had
had on the world. It Fell died on December nine
at his home in his mansion. He was one. Twenty
six years later, his bust was installed at the base
of his iconic tower, and the Turife remained the tallest
(29:42):
building in the world until nineteen thirty, and that was
when the Chrysler Building in New York City was constructed.
There have of course been other jockeying for positions of
who was tallest. At one point there was an addition
to the top of a Fell's tower which made it
tallest again for a second. But now it's of course
far behind many other impressive and slightly frightening things around
(30:04):
the world. But I really was a little taken Aback.
I didn't realize just how many kind of important structures
he had built throughout Europe that have gotten you know,
unless you're into engineering history or particularly his biography, people
may not realize that a lot of the infrastructure of
Europe is particularly you know, post industrial age he was
(30:28):
involved in in some way. Yeah, fascinating cool and I
kind of love him, even though he maybe had some
problems sharing credit. But he clearly was also a genius,
and I appreciate that he was very, very very obsessed
with um making sure that all the numbers were correct.
(30:51):
Like I I feel like at a time when people
were just playing guessing games, trying to put things together
and see if they worked, he was like, no, let's
actually map all this out on paper and make sure
the math is right. And he probably saved a lot
of time in terms of like the development of architecture
and engineering. Yeah, like for the world, not just for him. UM. Anyway,
(31:11):
clearly I think he's cool. You have some cool listener mail.
I do. Uh. This is from our listener Kaylee, who
is writing us from Devon. I like that because I
have a Devon rex cat that's maybe super nerdy and
not Germane at all, but there it is. She is
actually writing about sort of our Scaling Michael podcast. She said,
(31:33):
I loved your podcast about Scaling Michaels, so I thought
i'd send you a card from my favorite natural landmark
in my area, Brent Tour. The pictured tour is not
part of the more Land, but is the remnant of
a volcano back when much of England was under a
shallow sea. It's incredibly steep and offer stunning views all around.
It's also incredibly blustery, sometimes so windy it is hard
(31:54):
to talk perfect spot for a church. There are many
stories about the struggle to build, say Michael's Church, which
has a capacity of twenty, some involving the Devil and
making the church sometimes be referred to as the Devil's Church.
Brides used to have to be carried up the steep
hill to their ceremony. But it is a beautiful church
in a bizarre natural landmark, and I wanted to share
(32:14):
it with you briefly. Thank you so much for the show,
and hello from Devon Kaylee. That's a very cool story
about a thing I did not really know about at all.
So now I want to look that up and maybe
will we'll see what happens. Uh. If you would like
to write to us, you can do so at History
podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can also
find us on social media as missed in History and
(32:35):
at the website missed in History dot com. If you'd
like to subscribe to the podcast, that sounds like a
grand idea to me, you can do that on the
I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
are listening again. If you're interested and want to get
information on our trip to Paris in June, you can
do that at our website missed in History dot com.
Click on the link in the menu bar that says
Paris trip and you'll get all the info. For more
(33:01):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. As we
have been saying a lot, because we're into it and
it's exciting and we want you along with us. We
(00:21):
are going to Paris this summer is so exciting. So
in early June, we are jaunting off Paris UH to
do a fun trip where we're gonna explore a lot
of the places that were important during the French Revolution.
And you two can come along with us. Uh. If
you are interested in checking that out, you can go
to our website missed in History dot com. Look at
(00:43):
the menu bar at the top of the page. One
of your options to click on says Paris trip exclamation
point uh. And if you do that, you will be
passed through to the website that will handle bookings. You
can check it out see where all we're gonna go
and the fun things we're gonna do. Uh. And if
that is for you, you you can come this and we
will all laugh and laugh and laugh. And like I've
said before, I will cry at many things because I
(01:06):
find things like museums in historical places, very moving. One
of my friends has noted that a lot of pictures
on the website where the bookings are happening are of food,
and yes, we also plan to enjoy a whole lot
of French food. Oh yes, I'm already like scouting out
restaurants to take my husband on a date while we're there.
(01:26):
So this is the second of a two parter about
Gustava Fell. So I suggest you listen to the first
one first before this, or this might feel abrupt and
you may not appreciate the journey he went on to
become the the iconic builder that he ended up being.
And we talked, as I said in the part one,
about Gestava Feld's early years, and that leads straight into
(01:48):
today's show, in which we were going to talk about
some of his most famous works. So just as a
quick link up, as you'll recall if you listen to
that first part. When we close that out, the employee
that he had trusted to be his representative in Latin
America and South America died. NFL had made the decision
to completely pull out of his overseas business. As the
Fell's work ended in South America, there were larger contracts
(02:11):
coming in in Europe. First, in eighteen seventy five, Fel
was tasked with creating a new terminus building for the
Austrian Railways station at Pest, Hungary that's now Budapest. It
was a three million franc project and the new building
was constructed around the old one to avoid a service disruption.
(02:31):
When the news station was nearing completion, the old one
inside of it was demolished and then the last phase
of construction was completed. One of the big stands that
it Fell took in this design was asserting that the
structural elements of the building should not be hidden, but
should be incorporated into the design. He felt like his
plans for the station quote carefully brought out the role
(02:54):
in the nature of the various materials as clearly as possible. Yeah,
he had ly championed iron work as an important structural
material and he thought like, why are we hiding it?
It's making our building stronger, or we could we could
make this part of the design. Uh. And just a
few months after the project for the station at Pest
(03:15):
was contracted, a Fells firm one another large contract, this
one in Portugal, and the competition for this bridge project
for the Portuguese Railway Company had been fierce. Several other
European companies had submitted proposals, and it would be a
boon to whoever secured that contract. The design by it
Fels partner too Phil Seig, which featured a large trust
(03:39):
parabolic arch, was also the lowest bid and it gained
the favor of the railroad with only minor modifications. It
was built exactly to plan, which was incredibly demanding. Because
of the river's conditions and the tight budget that they
had proposed it, Fell and his team were able to
cut costs, not by cutting corners, but by innovating. I
Fel came up with a way to support the arch
(04:01):
segments with cables building from each side inward, instead of
having to build a scaffolding in the river, which would
have driven up the expense. That bridge, the Maria Pia Bridge,
was completed in less than two years and it still stands,
although it's no longer in use, was made a National
Monument of Portugal in Yeah, it's quite lovely. There's some
(04:22):
great pictures of it online if you care to go looking.
But though the project went well, there was some unease
for Gustava fell. For one, he and Seig had started
bickering over whether it fl could hire his brother in
law again. He had hired his brother in law on
a previous job, and he wanted to do so again
and say Rigg wasn't into it. Uh. And for another,
(04:43):
he seemed to really miss his family, and he actually
asked his wife, Marguerite, and their youngest child to move
to Portugal for the duration of the project. That was
something he had never done before. But Marguerite got sick.
She had experienced several bouts with pneumonia, and she became
very ill while living in Portugal. She traveled back to
Paris for treatment, but died in eighteen seventy seven at
(05:05):
the age of thirty two before the bridge was finished.
Gustave's sister, Marie and her husband Dr. Albert Hinok, who
she married a year after her first husband died, helped
him raise his children after Marguerite's death. But that wasn't
the only tragedy that came his way in the late
eighteen seventies. His mother also died in February of eighteen
seventy eight, so in the span of just a few months,
(05:28):
he lost two of the most important people in his life.
After the bridge was completed, Sarah wrote a paper about
its success and presented it at the French Society of Engineers.
While a Fell had been open about his part in
the project as well as another engineer, once SARAHI seemed
to want to take full credit for the successful bridge
(05:48):
for himself, I Fell became really irritated. He wrote his
own paper about the work, downplaying his partner's contribution. By
eighteen seventy nine, the relationship between the two of them
had completely so word and their partnership was ended. Yeah,
this is a thing that comes up a lot in
sort of criticism of Gustava Fell. There are some questions
about whether or not he was ever really very magnanimous
(06:11):
about letting other people have their time in the spotlight
on things they had collaborated on. So in this case
it is a little bit like some people will point
to this as a moment of like his his pride
becoming the problem. But once the dust had settled from
this disagreement, a Fell actually changed the name of his
firm to company destabisiment if sareg actually attempted to get
(06:36):
a portion of the company's assets, which he felt he
was entitled to remember, he had put in a greater
portion of capital when they first started the company, and
he went after what he thought was his fair sharing
court and this led to a legal battle that dragged
on for twelve long years. Eventually, Sarah was granted a
(06:57):
payment worth four times his initial investment with A Fell,
but that was it uh in terms of how much
the company had grown during that time. That seemed a
little insulting and it was considered a loss. In the
midst of this strife, it Fell was also involved in
another legal matter, although this one was a lot less contentious.
He had been going by it Fell, but his family
(07:18):
name legally was still hyphenated, so in eighteen eighty Gustav
legally had the family names changed from Bonchazen Fell to
simply Fell. Yeah, when his great great grandfather had moved
from Germany to France, he had done the hyphen nation
on the name, and then they had really gone by
a Fel for most of the time, so he was like,
let's just strike that and this will be our legal name.
(07:39):
In eighteen eighty fl began construction on the Viaduct of Garabee,
and this was a massive structure. It actually had a
similar design to the Maria Pia Bridge with a Trust
parabolic arch, but this bridge was much larger, and at
this point Gustava Fell had become so well respected that
he was really the only engineer that was seriously considered
for this channel lenging project. It was not put out
(08:02):
to bids the way most projects would be. They literally
were like, the only person who can build this is
Gustava Fell. It was immediately after this contract was in
place that a Fell formally and legally severed all of
his ties with his former partners Serig. This was also
a project that required pre setting the build site with
essentially a many town for the workers because the bridge
(08:23):
was in a pretty remote and undeveloped area. Because the
build was expected to last for a few years, provisions
had to be made for the workers to move with
their families if they wanted. Everything from living spaces to
retail stores that could provide the necessities to schools all
had to be built for the construction on the bridge
could even start, and as he had done throughout his career,
(08:45):
Gustava Fell rose to meet these challenges. The viaduct, which
included more than twenty six tons of iron in its
construction and cost roughly three million francs. Was completed at
the end of eight four. Accomplishing such a mass of
goal made it Fell famous. He was already well known
in construction, but this really kind of made him famous
(09:06):
throughout the country and even in in throughout Europe. As
you recall, this happened in Portugal, and it was sort
of part of the reason that he got his nickname,
which was the Magician du Feri or the iron Magician.
And sometimes you'll also see this translated as the iron Wizard.
I like that one better, but it's just me Iron Wizard.
It's fun. It makes me picture him in a pointy
(09:27):
hat with stars on it. Kind of uh, fantagious sty
he's making little iron uh little iron Tory Fell there
walking in in a row. Okay, we're about to talk
about a famous structure that gestap it Fell contributed to
(09:48):
that's here in the US. But first wee will take
a quick break to hear about one of those sponsors.
He was keeping this show going while Fels Firm continued
to work steadily. The next high profile job that he
worked on was actually the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the
(10:10):
World that was the original title for that piece, even
though we these days just called the Statue of Liberty.
Eduard Rene Le Fabre had initiated the idea of a
gift to the United States shortly after the Lincoln assassination
in eighteen sixty five, but this project took years to
really get momentum uh and get to the point where
(10:32):
they could send sculptor Frederic August Berteldi to the US
to survey the possibilities and come up with a design.
This statue is often cited as a gift of the
French government to the United States, but it was actually
not from the government. It was funded by private donors,
the people of France, who all gave their money so
that they could share this moment of of sort of
(10:54):
brotherhood and support, the only exception being a fairly sizable
donation from the city of Paris. Architect Eugene violet Le
Duc initially started work on the engineering of the structure,
and with his guidance, the head had been completed in
time to be displayed at the eighteen seventy eight Exposition Universe,
But Violet l Duke died in the fall of eighteen
(11:17):
seventy nine and it was Gustave it Fell that was
the replacement. It Fell developed a skeletal support plan for
this massive sculpture and designed the stairwells within so the
observation area would be easy to reach, and because the
statute was going to be so very exposed when it
was installed in New York, Fell took great care to
plant with an eye towards stability, even inforceful wind gusts.
(11:42):
So the copper sheeting that's used on it, each piece
is anchored to the interior framework. None of those sheets
are simply riveted to an adjacent sheet or sheets uh
and none of the sheets are load bearing in any way.
As we mentioned in our Emma Lazarous episode, there were
some issues with putting together the financial capital on the
U S side of things to complete the pedestal where
(12:03):
Lady Liberty would eventually stand. As a consequence, the team
working on the statue in France slowed down their production
rate towards the end of the build, while the United
States worked to raise the money to finish their construction.
But eventually, everything, of course did come together, and just
as he had done with a number of his projects
that he had shipped to South America, Fell, along with
(12:23):
berthel D and their teams, took the Statue of Liberty,
which they had built in its entirety apart, breaking it
down into three hundred and fifty component pieces for shipping,
and then those pieces were packed into two hundred and
fourteen custom crates loaded on a ship which left France
on May eighty five. It took a little less than
a month to make it to New York. That ship
(12:45):
arrived on June seventeenth, and after months of unpacking an assembly,
the statue was finally fully assembled in April eighteen eighty six.
The dedication ceremony for it was held on October twenty
of that same year. As Gstava Fell had been working
on the iconic French gift to the United States, another
project was starting to take root. In the early eighteen eighties,
(13:06):
plans began for another Paris Exposition Universal, this time to
align with the hundredth anniversary of the start of the
French Revolution. By the time things really started to get
organized for the event, it was already eighteen eighty six,
so the clock was ticking for an eighteen eighty nine
expo to be put together. Yeah, that's a little tight Yeah,
(13:28):
people had been working on it up to that point,
but they didn't really have all their pieces in place
to be like, now we have a full planning committee,
let's make this thing happen. And it sounds like ample
time for something on a smaller scale, but not something
as massive as these expositions were. Yeah, and exactly when
the idea of a tower as the centerpiece of this
show came into being is a little bit fuzzy. But
(13:51):
in May eighty six, an announcement was published in the
Government paper asking for submissions of ideas to build an
iron tower for the X. There were specific needs included
in this announcement. It had to be built on the
Chendo Mao, and it had to be three hundred meters
tall with a one twenty five square footprint, and all
(14:12):
submissions had to be submitted within sixteen days of this announcement,
so they only had two weeks in a tiny bit
of change to get their designs made, drafted, and submitted.
If those requirements seemed very very specific, it's because they were.
They perfectly matched a design that it Fell had ready
to go. Two of his engineers, Maurice cook Lan and
(14:35):
Emil Newgate, had already been working on the tower design
along with architects Defend Silvestra. Their earliest sketches of it
date back to eighteen eighty four, two years before the
Minister of Science and Industry published this call for submissions.
It was absolutely no surprise that among the one hundred
(14:55):
submissions for the tower contract was a design from a
Fell's firm. Were actually more submissions than that. That was
like the narrowed down these are the serious ones. After
a month of analysis of these various proposals, it was
determined that only a Fell's team had a workable design,
and initially uh Gustava Fell himself had not been especially
(15:16):
wowed with the ideas of Cookland and Neuguie, but he
encouraged him to keep going Usially, yeah, sure, keep working
on that, and once uh Sylvesta got involved, he kind
of liked where it was headed. But as he realized
what a feat this tower would be if it came
to fruition, he actually bought out the patent rights from
(15:37):
the other three men on the design, and in the
terms of their deal, their names would always remain connected
to the project because there was going to be some
prestige if it got accepted and they would each get
one percent of the estimated cost to build it. So, ultimately,
in a move that could be interpreted as very astute
or a very selfish or maybe both, I felt signed
(15:59):
the contracts not as his company but on behalf of
himself alone. Taking ownership in this way also gave f
L rights to income from tower tourism long after the
expo was over. He later asserted that he had only
wanted to take ownership quotes to assume company responsibility for
the enterprise and to devote to its realization efforts, which
(16:19):
I certainly didn't believe at the time would be onerous.
And it is true that had the men pursued submitting
the designs on their own, they wouldn't have had the
same means to build it if it had been accepted
without the f L name and the associated resources that
came with it. Yeah, this is another one of those
times I mentioned in the first episode that he sometimes
(16:40):
gets criticized as being kind of selfish, not very good
about sharing credit, and wanting to kind of be the
star of the show in regards to some of these projects. Uh,
he claims that it was completely magnanimous. He really thought like, no,
let me own it, and that way I will have
all of the resources to build it, and I will
take all the risk, and you're names will still be attached.
(17:01):
But it's legally and financially all on me. But other
people are like, no, dude, you wanted all the credit.
Also in eight six, Gustav's eldest daughter, Claire, got married.
She married a man named Adolph Salle, and this was
actually a huge boon to their family because sal became
one of a Fell's closest friends and collaborators, so he
(17:22):
maintained that close knit family that he had had from
the time he was a child. And one of those
little tidbits that you hear a lot of times and like,
uh fun facts about Paris kinds of articles on the internet.
The design style for this tower was not greeted with
universal enthusiasm. It was driven entirely by the needs of
the structure. There was no attempts to cover up the
(17:43):
iron work with masonry, and the lines of it were
determined mathematically to be the angles and positions of supports
required to sustain the desired height, which was to be
the tallest building in the world. Yeah, there were also
people like what is this tower for nothing? Just to
begin good? And it seemed kind of wasteful and silly
(18:04):
to some people to just build a tower for the
sake of building a tall thing. But this idea to
promote and showcase the materials of industrial modern design at
the time deeply offended a lot of Paris's art community.
A group called the Committee of three hundred, referencing the
three hundreds of height for the proposed tower, actually submitted
a petition to the Minister of Works condemning the design
(18:26):
and insisting that it was going to mar the beauty
of Paris if it were built a Fell's tower would
they felt being affront to the very ideals of France,
and they called it useless and a monstrosity. For his part,
Gustav defended the tower and asserted that there was plenty
of art and good design, and that there was no
reason the French shouldn't become just as renowned for their
(18:48):
engineering prowess as they had for their artistry and other fields.
He famously argued that the pyramids at Giza were nothing
more than artificial mountains, and yet they became some of
the most revered structures on Earth. Yeah, that's another thing
that people sometimes point to you and go, ma'am, that's
some ego to be like, know, what I'm building is
(19:08):
like the pyramids, you guys. Um. But he was right, uh,
eventually so despite the detractors. Though construction did begin in
January seven, and throughout the next two years of the
build Fel and his critics continued to trade barbs even
after it was completed. The complaints continued for a bit.
(19:30):
Writer Guie de Montisson, who had been one of the
men who spearheaded the petition committee, allegedly ate lunch in
the restaurant at the base of the structure every day
because he claimed that was the only place that he
could eat where he would not be seeing a Fel's eyesore.
You just have to see it the whole time you're
going there. Well, he claimed that there was. He wasn't
safe anywhere in Paris, Like everywhere he went he just
(19:52):
saw this horrible thing he hated. So at least if
he was in the horrible thing he hated, he wasn't
looking at it. We will get to some of the
specifics of the exposition and Universal Tower in just a minute,
but first we will take a quick sponsor break. The effort,
(20:15):
manpower and material needed to build the tower was of
course startling. Like I said, this could be a whole
episode on its own. We're kind of giving you the
speedy version. But more than fifty engineers and designers had
a hand in creating more than five thousand designed sketches
that detailed every single aspect of the tower. A hundred
and fifty workers at a Fell's factory at Levare manufactured
(20:39):
the needed pieces, which were then carted to the Schende
Mar and assembled by work site crews that ranged from
a hundred and fifty to three hundred men. Building on
the lessons that it Fell learned while working on a
statue of Liberty, he made sure that the tower for
the Expo and universal could withstand wind. The Tory Fell
can sway as much as six inches at the top
(20:59):
and as does sind to handle that movement. Yet also
you'll see a factoid sometimes that it bends slightly in
the sun and it can just rebounds back from that.
And one of the interesting aspects of how the tower
was assembled, at least to me, was its riveting process.
There's a great description of it on the torfl official
website that describes it. I'm just going to read what
(21:20):
they wrote because they'll do it better than if I
try to parse it and rewrite it. And that reads
quote first. The pieces were assembled in the factory using bolts,
later to be replaced one by one with thermally assembled rivets,
which contracted during cooling, thus ensuring a very tight fit.
A team of four men was needed for each rivet assembled,
one to heat it up, another to hold it in place,
(21:42):
a third to shape the head, and a force to
beat it with a sledge hammer. Only a third of
the two point five million rivets used in the construction
of the tower were inserted directly on site. When the
tower was completed, it was an almost instant popular success.
Almost two million people visit did the tower, which served
as the gateway to the exposition, and for the first
(22:04):
time the Exposition Universal made rather than lost money. Yeah,
that was always like not a not a profitable enterprise,
Like they were basically putting it on to show off
all of the many fabulous things that France could do.
This was similarly a problem in other places that have
had World's Fairs, but fundamentally they're kind of money pits.
(22:26):
But this one so many people showed up just to
see the tower that had been so controversial that they
ended up making money. And as the public and indeed
the world marveled at what Gustavo Fel had pulled off,
criticism from the art community kind of died down. But
fl found himself, unfortunately, in a whole other sort of trouble,
right on the heels of his eighteen eighty nine exposition success.
(22:49):
In eight seven, while working at his now famous tower,
fl had agreed to build one of the locks in
the Panama Canal that put him in business with Ferdinand
de Lesseps, who we mentioned on the first part of
this two parter. And by the way, for Bravo fans
in the crowd, yes that's the same family. Yes, those
of you that didn't get that ignored it's not important,
(23:11):
but there is a Dela SEPs involved in one of
the Bravo shows. Yes, related to Ferdinand. I'm gonna say
I said that, and I don't know. Uh So to
set the stage on why this was a problem, we
actually have to go back a little bit to eighteen
seventy nine, when Della SEPs became president of the company
Universal du Canal in eighteen eighty shares of that company
(23:35):
were offered to the public as a way to drum
up funding to build this canal, and delas EPs was
hoping to once again find the success that he had
achieved with the Suez Canal with this venture, which would
excavate a ship canal along the narrow isthmus of Panama.
But the whole enterprise was a huge and tragic failure.
Dela SEPs had not managed things well. He had really
(23:58):
not studied historical exploration of the area, which revealed it
to be exceedingly unwelcoming. He also had only made personal
visits to the area during the dry season and had
no sense of the dangers of the rainy season. Twenty
thousand men died while working on the canal, due primarily
to malaria and yellow fever. Even as men were dying
(24:20):
in large numbers in Panama, Delisps was recruiting new workers
in France. Yes, so there was just some one ignorance,
kind of willful ignorance in the mix, and to just
some kind of gross behavior of like, ah, lots of
people are dying, I better go get more guys and
not really tell them how dangerous this whole thing is
And in addition to that very tragic human cost, there
(24:43):
was also a very real financial loss in the venture
as well. Approximately two hundred and fifty million dollars it's
about a half billion francs at the time were sunk
into this ultimately failed project, and when it ran out
of money, all of those investors who had contributed to
the project were left with no way to get their
money back. So there were some people who believed in this,
(25:03):
spent their life savings to try to be part of it,
and then we're left destitute. The whole enterprise became a
huge scandal, and Gustava Fell was in the middle of it.
He had initially been against the project, which de la
SEPs had conceived without locks. It wasn't until the addition
of a lock system that if L had gotten involved.
And just like Ferdinand del SEPs and his son Charles,
(25:25):
Gustava Fell was charged with fraud for his involvement in
the mismanaged canal project, even though he had not been
part of that business administration side in he was actually
sentenced to two years in prison and he was also fined,
but that verdict was overturned by a higher court. But
even though at that point he had cleared his record,
(25:45):
he just felt as though his name as a builder
was tainted forever due to the extensive coverage that this
whole scandal had gotten in the press for years. At
that point, it Fell withdrew from his firm and it
was renamed Lass Society Dick Construction leve Valois Parae. At
that point, Maurice Coklan, one of the engineers who had
originally conceived of the tower that made a Fel famous,
(26:07):
took over as managing director of the company. But Gustava
Fell did not retire to an idle life. He merely
switched gears and began a second career in science. He
started conducting his own research with the intention that he
was going to share any of his findings freely, and
in eight he started conducting experiments at his famed tower.
(26:28):
As part of the construction agreement that it Fell had
signed to build the tower, he paid for a significant
amount of its cost, and in return he was entitled
to money made from the visitors for twenty years. After that,
the city government would take full possession of the structure,
and the intent was that it would be taken down
at that point. But by the late eighteen nineties the
engineer turned research scientists had added an antenna to the
(26:51):
tower and was running wireless telegraph experiments there. And as
a consequence of this work, which was seen for its
value immediately, particularly for milly Harry applications, the city extended
the concession to a Fell to continue his work. So
he basically retained that same agreement on the tower uh
for a much longer period of time, and the tower,
(27:11):
of course was never disassembled as had originally been planned,
since we were talking about it, because we are going
to go see it in a couple of months. In
addition to the telegraph and radio transmissions, I Fell began
investigating aerodynamics, which he had become fascinated by while working
on the Statue of Liberty. He built a wind tunnel
(27:31):
at the tower in nineteen o nine and an aero
dynamics laboratory in nineteen twelve and another part of the
city where he could do even larger wind tunnel experiments
and in his lab at a toy a. Fel used
model aircraft in his larger wind tunnel to study the
optimal designs of things like propeller thrust and speed and
angle of inclination and air resistance, and his work there
(27:53):
also contributed to missile design and how bombs were released.
His work directly impacted the aircraft that France used in
the First World War and established new levels of knowledge
in aircraft science. I have actually seen some people comment
that he really should be just as well known for
his work in aircraft engineering as he is for having
(28:13):
built this iconic tower. But u that doesn't get talked
about very often. But for all this work in the
Smithsonian Institution awarded him the Langley Gold Medal. Just as
he had been in engineering bridges and other structures, Fell
was meticulous in his calculations and measurements in aerodynamics, which
Alexander Graham Bell said, quote have given engineers the data
(28:36):
for designing and constructing flying machines upon sound scientific principles.
Fel designed a fighter plane in nineteen seventeen, and his designs,
which he distributed without any renumeration, were used to build
two prototypes by the company that would eventually evolve into
Air France. Those designs were eventually abandoned, though in nineteen
(28:57):
twenty Gestava Fell actually retired uh he was in his
eighties at that point. And he spent much of his
time in the mansion that he had built for his
entire family on the Rue Rebelais, and he wrote his
memoirs during this time, but he did not have any
intention to publish them. He just wanted the family to
have a record of his life and work. And he
had this very unique experience. We often talk about people
(29:19):
not getting to know how important their work was while
they were alive, but he had a sense while he
was still alive of the impact that his work had
had on the world. It Fell died on December nine
at his home in his mansion. He was one. Twenty
six years later, his bust was installed at the base
of his iconic tower, and the Turife remained the tallest
(29:42):
building in the world until nineteen thirty, and that was
when the Chrysler Building in New York City was constructed.
There have of course been other jockeying for positions of
who was tallest. At one point there was an addition
to the top of a Fell's tower which made it
tallest again for a second. But now it's of course
far behind many other impressive and slightly frightening things around
(30:04):
the world. But I really was a little taken Aback.
I didn't realize just how many kind of important structures
he had built throughout Europe that have gotten you know,
unless you're into engineering history or particularly his biography, people
may not realize that a lot of the infrastructure of
Europe is particularly you know, post industrial age he was
(30:28):
involved in in some way. Yeah, fascinating cool and I
kind of love him, even though he maybe had some
problems sharing credit. But he clearly was also a genius,
and I appreciate that he was very, very very obsessed
with um making sure that all the numbers were correct.
(30:51):
Like I I feel like at a time when people
were just playing guessing games, trying to put things together
and see if they worked, he was like, no, let's
actually map all this out on paper and make sure
the math is right. And he probably saved a lot
of time in terms of like the development of architecture
and engineering. Yeah, like for the world, not just for him. UM. Anyway,
(31:11):
clearly I think he's cool. You have some cool listener mail.
I do. Uh. This is from our listener Kaylee, who
is writing us from Devon. I like that because I
have a Devon rex cat that's maybe super nerdy and
not Germane at all, but there it is. She is
actually writing about sort of our Scaling Michael podcast. She said,
(31:33):
I loved your podcast about Scaling Michaels, so I thought
i'd send you a card from my favorite natural landmark
in my area, Brent Tour. The pictured tour is not
part of the more Land, but is the remnant of
a volcano back when much of England was under a
shallow sea. It's incredibly steep and offer stunning views all around.
It's also incredibly blustery, sometimes so windy it is hard
(31:54):
to talk perfect spot for a church. There are many
stories about the struggle to build, say Michael's Church, which
has a capacity of twenty, some involving the Devil and
making the church sometimes be referred to as the Devil's Church.
Brides used to have to be carried up the steep
hill to their ceremony. But it is a beautiful church
in a bizarre natural landmark, and I wanted to share
(32:14):
it with you briefly. Thank you so much for the show,
and hello from Devon Kaylee. That's a very cool story
about a thing I did not really know about at all.
So now I want to look that up and maybe
will we'll see what happens. Uh. If you would like
to write to us, you can do so at History
podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can also
find us on social media as missed in History and
(32:35):
at the website missed in History dot com. If you'd
like to subscribe to the podcast, that sounds like a
grand idea to me, you can do that on the
I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
are listening again. If you're interested and want to get
information on our trip to Paris in June, you can
do that at our website missed in History dot com.
Click on the link in the menu bar that says
Paris trip and you'll get all the info. For more
(33:01):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff
works dot com
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