The Life And Life Of Gustave Eiffel Tower

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Gustave Eiffel was born in 1832 in Cote-d’Or, France and died in 1923 in Paris, France. He was an architect who started building bridges and worked his way up to creating the world famous, Eiffel Tower.
Although he was born in Cote-d’Or he was raised in Paris. His mother owned a charcoal-distribution business that she inherited from her parents. At the time of his birth his dad was an administrator for the French army but soon joined his mom. The family came up with the name Eiffel from the Eifel Mountains of which they came. The family name was not changed to Eiffel formally until 1880. Due to his mother’s job, he lived with his grandmother, but still remained close with his mother. Catherine Eiffel sold the business in 1843 and retired on the proceeds.
Eiffel attended the Lycee Royal in Dijon and thought that all his classes except history and literature were boring and a waste of time. An important figure was his uncle, Jean-Baptiste Mollerat, who invented a process for distilling vinegar. He taught young Eiffel everything from chemistry and mining to theology and philosophy .
Eiffel went to College Sainte-Barbe in Paris so that he may prepare for the entrance exams to the engineering colleges that he wanted to go to. Because his scores were not good enough, Eiffel couldn’t go to Ecole Polytechnique so instead he went to Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris. He chose to specialize in chemistry in his second year. He graduated 13th of the 80 candidates in 1855.
His first job after graduation was working as an unpaid assistant to his brother-in-law who managed a foundry. Eiffel moved on to work as a paid private secretary for the railway engineer Charles Nepveu. Shortly after, Nepveu’s business went out of busin...

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...al people joined him in building it, including Maurice Koechlin, a young graduate of the Zurich Polytechnikum, and Emile Nouguier, who had previously worked for Eiffel on the construction of the Douro bridge.
The design of the Eiffel tower was originated by Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier. Construction on the foundations started in 1887. The tower was finished in 1889 and was used as the entrance arch to the World’s Fair that year.
In 1913 Eiffel was awarded the Samuel P. Langley Medal for Aerodromics by the Smithsonian Institute for his researches on the resistance of the air in connection with aviation. He also built a weather station at his house in Sevres.
Eiffel died on December 27, 1923 while listening to Beethoven’s 5th symphony andante, in his mansion on Rue Rabelais in Paris, France. He was buried in the family tomb in Levallois-Perret Cemetery.

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