Gustave Eiffel — a brilliant mind in engineering
Gustave Eiffel was a brilliant scientist known for designing the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Gustave Eiffel was a French engineer, born in Dijon in 1832. His company was famous for building strong iron bridges and railway viaducts. For the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, his team designed a 300-meter (about 1,000-foot) iron tower. It was put together from 18,000 pieces held by millions of rivets, and his engineers calculated exactly how to shape it so strong winds would not knock it down.
The Eiffel Tower is now one of the most visited monuments in the world, and Eiffel later used it for science, studying weather, radio and how air pushes on objects. Engineers still learn from his careful calculations about wind and metal structures when they design bridges and skyscrapers today.
What is Gustave Eiffel best known for?
Have children build the tallest tower they can using blocks or craft sticks, then talk about why triangle shapes help make Eiffel's tower so strong.
Look at pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty side by side and talk about how the same engineer helped design parts of both.
For a big exhibition in Paris in 1889.
Iron — it was the tallest structure in the world when built.
Yes — the metal frame inside the Statue of Liberty.
Millions of people every year.
Building a tower with blocks, drawing its triangle shapes, comparing it to the Statue of Liberty, or coloring a printable worksheet.