Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is a wrought-iron lattice tower in Paris, completed in 1889 as the entrance to that year's World's Fair. It is about 330 metres tall, except in summer, when it can be up to around fifteen centimetres taller, because iron expands when it is warm. It is therefore one of the few tall things to get taller on holiday.^[1]

It was built by the engineering company of Gustave Eiffel and was only meant to stand for twenty years. It is now well over a hundred years past that, and nobody has mentioned it to the tower.

Height

The tower was the tallest structure in the world when it opened, and kept the title until 1930. Its height has since been raised several times by adding aerials to the top, which engineers point out is cheating, but tall cheating.^[2]

The summer growth is not even. The side facing the Sun warms up first and expands more, so on hot days the top of the tower leans very slightly away from it. The tower is the only monument in Paris that changes its pose for the weather.

Paint

The tower is repainted by hand roughly every seven years, using around sixty tonnes of paint. Painting it from bottom to top takes long enough that, by tradition, there is always a conversation about which bit was done first.^[3]

• Number of coats of paint over its life: about twenty.
• Number of times it has been asked whether it would prefer a different colour: several.
• Number of times it has answered: none.

See also

• Skyscraper – a tower with offices
• Lighthouse – a tower with a job
• Flagpole – a tower that gave up early
• Big Ben – a tall landmark that also tells the time
• Leaning Tower of Pisa – a tower that leans instead
• Mona Lisa – another reason people queue in Paris
• Statue of Liberty – a statue built around a frame by the same engineer

References

1. Lattice, L. (1989). Iron, and Then Some. Rivet Press.
2. Aerial, A. (2001). “Is It Still Cheating If It's an Aerial?” Height Quarterly 2: 330.
3. Brush, B. (2012). Which Bit Was First. Ladder Books. 7th ed.