Original subtitles

HORNS HONK

A majestic presence has towered over Paris for more than 130 years.

A symbol of progress and of breaking boundaries,

France's "Iron Lady" is a global icon.

In 1889, Gustave Eiffel achieved the impossible.

The dream of every engineer -

to build the tallest tower in the world.

In the heart of Paris, he raised this 7,300-tonne iron colossus

in just two years, two months and five days.

But this tower could not have existed

without the engineering innovations of the three preceding decades

and Gustave Eiffel's other work, found all over the world.

From the bridges of Vietnam to the sweeping Garabit viaduct,

Bordeaux's rivers, to the secrets of New York's Statue of Liberty,

the Eiffel Tower is the crowning glory of a life spent

pushing back limits.

What challenges - both human and technical -

did Eiffel and his engineers face with such a massive project?

And how did his scientific research help Eiffel

save the tower from destruction?

This is the epic story of France's Iron Lady.

WIND WHISTLES

On the 31st of March 1889, Gustave Eiffel refused to allow

anyone else to unfurl the French flag at the top of his tower.

Aged nearly 60,

he faced the ever-changing winds of an icy winter

to mark the completion of his greatest masterpiece,

300m over Paris.

The Eiffel Tower was born out of the Industrial Revolution,

the age of iron and coal.

The plentiful supply of coal in Great Britain,

where everything started at the end of the 18th century,

changed the world -

along with revolutionary inventions like the steam engine,

the railway and the steel industry.

One foundation technology of the Industrial Revolution was

a type of wrought iron called puddled iron.

Strong yet flexible, it was obtained by melting iron ore

and introducing oxygen until it was decarbonised.

In the 1850s, the production of puddled iron boomed

with the mechanisation of the blast furnace.

In France, a flurry of forges

and metal construction companies emerged.

One of these firms was founded in 1864

by the 32-year-old engineer Gustave Eiffel.

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH:

Since the beginning of the 19th century,

architects had dreamed of exceeding the Gothic cathedrals

and the Egyptian pyramids.

Two projects for 300m-high towers had emerged in England

and the United States, but neither was completed.

Two prominent engineers from the Eiffel company,

Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin,

were also tempted by the idea of building a 300m tower.

But how to go about it?

Using the hallmark iron construction techniques of the Eiffel company,

Koechlin and Nouguier came up with a pylon design.

Eiffel was not impressed.

For art historian Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby,

the yearning for the gigantic fits the historical context

of the 19th century.

Rise of capitalism, rise of empire,

rise of nationalist rivalries, all of that feeds

the kind of competition to prove one's modernity,

efficiency, capacity, um, to astonish people

with the surprises of things like the Eiffel Tour.

It was the in-house architect, Stephen Sauvestre,

who won Eiffel over to the project,

gracing the pylon with decorative arches

and adding platforms to welcome the public.

He transformed the unattractive pylon into an elegant monument.

Eiffel saw that a revolutionary tower could be the main attraction

of the 1889 World's Fair in Paris

and committed himself to the project.

A fabulous 300m iron tower,

from which people could admire the city of Paris.

The Eiffel Tower project was born.

The tower would be higher than Notre Dame, the pyramids of Egypt

and almost twice as high as the Washington Monument,

which held the world record at 169m.

Many feared that, at 300m,

the wind would be destructive.

How would the engineers ensure

that their tower could withstand high winds?

Gustave Eiffel built this facility in Paris

towards the end of his life -

an aerodynamics laboratory, which is still in use.

This is where Benoit Roman, an expert in structural mechanics,

is comparing the effect of wind on models of the Eiffel Tower

and a tower with straight sides.

WHIRRING

Why is the Eiffel Tower model much better at resisting wind

than the other model?

One of Eiffel's most impressive earlier achievements is

this magnificent railway bridge in Auvergne, in central France.

The Garabit viaduct was opened in 1884,

just as the project for the Eiffel Tower was being conceived.

Standing 120m above the Truyere river,

it connects the two sides of the valley with a parabolic arch

of unprecedented length...

..165m - a record for the time.

Patricia Vergne Roches is an expert in the history of the bridge.

The metallic structure is a fabulous weblike arrangement of iron beams.

For Eiffel and his engineers,

every bridge was a chance to introduce technical improvements.

A parabolic shape would be better able

to resist the forces produced by heavy trains.

The organisational expertise needed on site testifies

to the technical know-how and talent of Eiffel's company.

The perfectly mastered completion of this civil engineering work,

to worldwide admiration,

was key to the success of the 300m tower project.

With the Garabit viaduct works behind them,

the Eiffel team could now focus

on building the highest monument in the world.

In June 1884, Eiffel, Koechlin, Nouguier

and Sauvestre exhibited a model at the Decorative Arts Exhibition.

Building a needle in the heart of Paris caught the imagination

of the French Minister of Trade, Edouard Lockroy,

who was looking for a revolutionary idea

to boost the forthcoming World's Fair in 1889.

What better choice than a record-breaking monument?

The publicity for Paris

and the very young Third Republic would be global.

The 300m tower would be topped by a beacon...

..like another monument intended to enlighten the world,

which also owes a lot to Eiffel's genius.

In 1879, Gustave Eiffel was involved

in the construction of a remarkable work,

Liberty Enlightening The World, which would later become

the Statue of Liberty.

The sculpture, by Auguste Bartholdi,

was a gift from the Republic of France to the American people

to mark the centenary of their independence.

The tallest statue in the world, at 92m, including its pedestal,

was another artistic and technical challenge on an unprecedented scale.

The statue and its structure crossed the Atlantic in 210 special crates.

Sited at the entrance of New York Harbor,

it would become an undisputed symbol of the city.

It is 6am.

Before opening to the 20,000 daily visitors,

ranger Matthew Housch climbs up into the heart of the statue.

This 162-step staircase gives an insight into Eiffel's structure.

The similarities with the tower are clear.

What's most impressive about the interior of the Statue of Liberty

is how all of this iron and steel works together to hold

her over 300ft above New York Harbor.

Over 100 years of wind and rain,

she still stands because of this interior structure.

The inside of the Statue of Liberty can be a disorienting place,

but what you are seeing are hundreds of copper plates -

so that's the dark metal that you see all along the interior here -

that's her skin.

And those copper plates were all riveted together with

thousands of little copper rivets,

but the copper skin has to be held up,

so you can see there's thousands of steel bars

connect the copper plates to the secondary iron bars,

and all of those iron bars connect back here to these iron pylons.

The iron structure designed by Eiffel's engineers accommodates

this staircase up to Miss Liberty's crown

and its unique view of New York.

This view became popular over time

and, as visitors keep coming into the Statue of Liberty,

the Statue of Liberty becomes the Statue of Liberty.

She becomes an icon that represents not just New York City,

but the United States herself.

Thanks to its impressive structure,

the Statue of Liberty has withstood the test of time.

Since its inauguration in 1886,

it has given New York a unique identity.

Its universal appeal reflected on Gustave Eiffel.

But, despite this resounding success, his project for the 300m

Paris tower had stalled

for lack of a firm government commitment.

Fortunately, Gustave Eiffel was a shrewd businessman,

winning orders in South America, Portugal, the Philippines,

and the French colonies of Indochina.

The Eiffel company could afford to wait out the bureaucratic delays

of the French government.

It is in Vietnam that Eiffel built the greatest number of structures.

The Pont Des Messageries in Ho Chi Minh City is well known.

But dozens of portable bridges,

exported by Eiffel to Vietnam, are now lost.

The old city once boasted 100 of them.

The Vietnam War and rampant urbanisation

have probably destroyed most of Eiffel's portable bridges.

But after studying satellite images of the city,

Bertrand Lemoine is convinced that some of them might still be in use.

Another bridge of the same type has been spotted.

Back in Paris, Gustave Eiffel could count on the unfailing

support of the French Minister of Trade.

Edouard Lockroy had launched a competition,

inviting submissions for the 1889 World's Fair.

Among other projects, "Contestants shall study

"the possibility of erecting an iron tower on the Champ-de-Mars."

It so happened that the specified dimensions were exactly those

of Eiffel's design.

Candidates only had 15 days to submit their designs.

After months of struggle, Eiffel had won.

He would have his tower and he would finance it himself.

At the company's headquarters in Levallois-Perret,

engineers and draughtsmen feverishly started work.

The World's Fair would open on 6th May 1889,

giving them two years and two months to build the tower.

The countdown had begun.

Every part of the tower was calculated

to one-tenth of a millimetre.

More than 5,000 drawings were produced by this office.

7,300 tonnes of iron were ordered

and, barely 20 days after the concession was signed,

on 27th January 1887,

the first earthworks began on the vast cleared expanse

of the Champ de Mars.

Using shovels and pickaxes,

400 workers laboured for nine hours a day to dig four huge holes.

Rubble was disposed of in wheelbarrows,

horse-drawn carts and minecarts.

The four legs of the tower had to be anchored deep in the ground.

31,000 cubic metres of earth, a volume equivalent

to ten Olympic-sized swimming pools,

were removed using rudimentary methods.

This stage of the works was essential to ensure

the stability of the tower.

The first problem came two weeks after work started.

Well-known artists published a petition against the Eiffel Tower

in the influential daily Le Temps, under editor Adrien Hebrard.

They protested against the erection

of "the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower".

Eiffel's counterattack was scathing and inspired.

"Because we are engineers, do people think that we are not preoccupied

"by beauty in our constructions

"and that, although we build them sturdy and durable,

"we do not also strive to make them elegant?"

On site, the works were under way.

The foundations on the banks of the Seine lay 7m

below river level, so could easily flood.

How would Eiffel overcome this obstacle?

He called on the know-how he'd acquired

30 years earlier in Bordeaux, when, as a young engineer

fresh out of the Ecole Centrale, an elite engineering school,

he led the construction of his first major iron structure,

a 504m-long railway viaduct linking the two banks of the River Garonne,

which is very wide at that point.

This impressive structure almost disappeared

when the modern bridge rendered it obsolete.

Gustave Eiffel's descendant, Myriam Larnaudie-Eiffel,

helped save this iron masterpiece.

SHE GASPS

It is the longest iron bridge ever built in France

and still makes the Eiffel family proud.

Eiffel's youthful leadership skills helped solve

this major technical challenge,

digging riverbed foundations for the six pairs of bridge piers.

How could anyone build such massive foundations 10m underwater?

But when the compressed air chambers were used 30 years later

to dig the tower's foundations near the Seine,

workers in the pressurised section experienced problems.

Press reports led to a public outcry and, once again,

Eiffel relied on Minister Lockroy to subdue this new protest.

He summoned the press to the construction site.

Work resumed immediately.

Soon, solid foundations were ready to support the metal structure.

The iron elements were cut, trimmed, adjusted

and drilled to the exact measurements set out in the plans.

Once on site, they had to fit together perfectly.

The Eiffel construction method made it possible to

build at an amazing pace.

Six months after the start of construction,

four 54-degree inclined pillars rose from the ground.

There were very few workers on site - barely 250 -

but they were very efficient.

Progress was impressive - the metallic structure rising fast

to the incessant beat of the riveters' hammers.

But how were the parts assembled on the building site?

In Gonesse, north of Paris, one business still employs

the efficient riveting assembly process used by the Eiffel company.

In this workshop, Eiffel-style beams are produced

to restore old structures.

OK.

MACHINE THUDS AND WHIRS

At the time of the tower's construction,

there were no pneumatic tools.

Riveting was carried out on site by teams of four workers.

The first makes the rivet white hot in a brazier.

The second positions it in the assembly hole.

The third holds the rivet head while the fourth hammers it in place.

As it cools, the rivet contracts, holding the parts firmly together.

A total of two and a half million rivets were set on the Eiffel Tower,

half of them on site,

sometimes in highly acrobatic and even dangerous conditions.

No lives were lost during the main construction phase of the project,

but one Italian worker, Angelo Scagliotti,

died after the tower's inauguration.

As the structure grew, so did the challenges.

How do you lift thousands of tonnes of iron

to heights of 100, 200 and then 300m?

Eiffel came up with a solution,

using mobile steam cranes in each of the tower's legs.

The greatest challenge facing the engineers was securing horizontal

beams to the four inclined legs to create a first floor platform.

The position of the four 700-tonne pillars

had to be millimetre perfect.

The tower was standing by itself.

They had done it.

To Eiffel's great relief, the complex operation was complete.

But January 1888 was a hard month.

Winter slowed down their progress and the second

and third levels were still to be built.

Another 250m were required to reach the magical 300m height.

With only 15 months left, time was running out.

That same year, another ambitious engineering project was

making headlines in Paris.

There was bad news from Panama,

where French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps was digging

a canal without locks to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Disaster upon disaster had left it considerably behind schedule.

The Panama Canal, organised by Lesseps,

who again I emphasise was not an engineer,

was such a failure and entailed

such loss of life,

and as people...you know,

it entailed trying to cut through a mountain,

and that mountain kept having mudslides.

It was a disaster.

Finally, and one billion gold francs later,

the Lesseps version of the canal, without locks, had to be abandoned.

And the Panama Interoceanic Company, the pride of France,

funded by thousands of small investors, had to be salvaged.

Many saw Eiffel as the man to turn this disaster into a triumph.

Boosted by progress on the tower, Eiffel agreed

to take on the most gigantic civil engineering project of his times.

For the astronomical amount of 100 million francs -

more than 15 times the Eiffel Tower's construction cost -

he was contracted to build ten giant canal locks.

He agrees to make those locks at a great cost to Lesseps.

Eiffel will reap great rewards

and he needs those, I believe, to build the Eiffel Tower.

I believe that the Panama Canal project is partly funding

the Eiffel Tower itself.

Eiffel had to take charge of the construction site,

direct the gigantic earthworks,

manufacture 20 enormous lock gates of his own design,

then ship them to Panama and deliver the work,

all before the concession expired in 1890.

He now had two races against the clock.

The Eiffel company was working at full capacity.

On 4th July 1888, a party was in full swing

on the tower's first level.

Gustave Eiffel had organised a banquet to celebrate

American Independence Day.

The first level of the tower was decked out

in the colours of the two nations.

In the middle, a table had been set up to welcome the press.

Over 40 journalists and foreign correspondents had made the ascent

to the first floor.

But, six months before the scheduled completion date,

the site's machinery ground to a halt.

On 19th September 1888, most of the workers went on strike.

Of the 140 riveters, fitters and carpenters,

only 27 showed up for work.

Construction couldn't continue.

Eiffel quickly did the calculations.

The tower might not be completed in time for the World's Fair.

He met their demands.

By November 1888,

Eiffel and his team were all smiles again.

The tower had become the tallest building on Earth - 170m -

one metre higher than the Washington Monument's stone obelisk.

Progress would now be faster.

The structure was thinner and required fewer parts.

One metre was being added every day.

By 15th March 1889, the third level was almost complete.

But there was still the paintwork to finish

and the lifts to install, which was turning into a major headache.

The tower's lifts, a crucial part of the visitor experience,

represented a technological leap forward.

Transporting the public to a height of 300m was a new challenge

and new machinery had to be invented to meet it.

Stephane Rosec is in charge of the lifts.

His workplace is worthy of a novel by Jules Verne.

The key to producing the energy needed to raise

the lifts to the first and then the second level is

hydraulic pressure.

This hydraulic pressure pushes an imposing 16m-long jack.

In turn, it drives a rail-mounted carriage, which operates

a set of pulleys that raises the elevator car up to the second level.

When the piston travels one metre,

this system of pulley cables moves the cabin 8m.

But on the 31st March 1889, the lifts were not ready

and Gustave Eiffel had to climb the stairs to raise the French flag.

WIND WHISTLES

A few daring climbers braved the heights to accompany him.

This beautiful open structure had been completed in record time.

Well, almost.

The lifts were not yet working and the paintwork was unfinished.

The Eiffel Tower has received 19 coats of paint

since its construction, an average of one every seven years,

as prescribed by Gustave Eiffel himself, to protect it from rust.

From one painting campaign to the next,

the tower's colours have changed.

Very bright at the time of the World's Fair,

they have since become much darker.

The tower has been repainted 19 times.

It is now time for a fresh coat.

Pierre-Antoine Gatier is in charge.

The yellow-brown paint is the same colour chosen by Eiffel in 1907,

when the tower acquired permanent status.

The tower is repainted by rope access,

using tools such as the mop - an angled brush

similar to those originally used by the Eiffel company workers.

It takes several years to apply the 60 tonnes of paint

to cover the surface of the tower using this technique.

In Paris, after more than two years of dizzying construction work,

the big day arrived.

Parisians and visitors flocked into the city.

On 6th May 1889, after a race against the clock,

the French President, Sadi Carnot,

opened the World's Fair with the utmost solemnity.

The triumph of iron was complete.

The World's Fair was then opened to the public, who arrived in droves,

thanks, in part, to a railway line specially built for the occasion.

Contrary to some of the artists' predictions,

the sight was priceless.

FANFARE PLAYS

On the evening of 6th May 1889, there was a grand celebration...

..and the tower unveiled her lights for the first time.

Boats on the Seine were festooned with lanterns.

Orchestras played late into the night.

The special day of inauguration ended

with a suitably festive climax.

The Universal Expo World's Fair was a huge success,

attracting 32 million visitors between May and October 1889.

Over the same period of time, Monsieur Eiffel's tower,

the undisputed star of the fair, sold over two million tickets -

a resounding success.

But, despite Eiffel's star shining so brightly,

the year 1892 turned into a nightmare.

He was caught up in an enormous scandal that shook French society.

The bankruptcy of the company that built the Panama Canal,

headed by the famous Charles de Lesseps.

Thousands of small investors were ruined -

some committed suicide.

The scandal revealed the corruption of members of parliament

from every party.

Eiffel, too, was a suspect.

On 10th January, after a two-year investigation,

the trial of the directors of the Panama Interoceanic Company

opened in Paris.

Facing the judges at the Higher Appeals Court,

the defendants include Charles de Lesseps,

along with his father, Ferdinand de Lesseps,

two other company directors and Eiffel.

They had to answer charges of complicity in fraud

and breach of trust.

At first, Eiffel was convinced he would be exonerated.

But a month later, although defended by a brilliant lawyer,

he was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 20,000 francs.

He was discredited and his reputation shattered.

For Eiffel, it was a humiliation.

The tower was also going through a rough patch.

Visitors were deserting it and the scandal didn't help.

What would become of the monument as the date approached

for the World's Fair in 1900, also taking place in Paris?

Transformation projects emerged,

maliciously proposing to turn the tower into an improbable rock,

or a giant belfry topped by a clock,

or a kind of Mesopotamian ziggurat.

Eiffel dismissed these projects as distortions of his tower.

What he really wanted was

to transform it into a palace of electricity.

The investment would have been enormous,

but the tower would essentially be preserved in its original form.

JAUNTY PIANO MUSIC

The 1900 fair was much larger than that of 1889,

and its centre was no longer on the Champ de Mars,

but closer to Les Invalides and the Place de la Concorde,

where a spectacular gateway had been placed.

As a result, the tower found itself on the sidelines,

and the modernisation work carried out to improve the lifts

and install electricity was not enough to rekindle public interest.

Once the 1900 World's Fair was over,

ideas emerged to transform the Champ de Mars again,

this time into a large park.

Eiffel was worried.

He looked for ways to preserve the tower

and make it a lasting fixture in the Parisian landscape.

It would be the last battle of his life.

With his mind increasingly focused on science, he foresaw

the importance of wireless radio, which required very high antennas.

He understood the role the tower could play

in the development of wireless telegraphy.

In December 1903, he decided to turn to the army.

His proposal received a cool reception at the ministry,

except from a brilliant young engineer, Captain Ferrie,

who was looking to develop wireless telegraphy.

Ferrie obtained authorisation from the army

to install a wireless station at the Eiffel Tower.

Gustave Eiffel paid for huts to host a transmitter on the Champ de Mars.

The tower was equipped with an extraordinary antenna

made of four steel cables.

This antenna was constantly evolving.

The Iron Lady ended up being rigged with 360m cables.

One year before its concession was due to end in 1909,

it had become a strategic tool for national defence.

The tower was saved from destruction and the concession was extended.

It was a cold day in Paris when Gustave Eiffel died,

on 27th December 1923, at the age of 91,

one year after the inauguration of Radio Tour Eiffel.

Le Matin paid him tribute,

"A great Frenchman, whose name is famous the world over,

"has just died."

Gustave had left his tower without a protector.

A few years later, the Eiffel Tower lost its 41-year record

as the world's tallest building.

In quick succession, two New York skyscrapers overtook it.

The Chrysler Building at 319m in 1930,

followed by the famous Empire State Building in 1931,

which topped out at 381m.

The Eiffel Tower in so many ways is surpassed by skyscrapers,

the building of taller and taller structures,

especially in the United States,

and I think there is a way that, in terms of appreciating

its longevity, one has to understand

that what began as unforeseen,

modern construction, so bold, so geometric, so nonfigurative,

at some point transforms into a certain quaintness...

..a certain nostalgia for a 19th century

that has been so surpassed by the 20th.

The Eiffel Tower still stands,

not just for Paris but for 19th-century Paris.

Now in the hands of the City of Paris,

this 19th-century monument renews itself constantly

to retain its glamour.

In 1985, 336 sodium lamps were installed inside the structure.

Then a network of LED bulbs was added all over the outer surface

to create a sparkling effect that has delighted visitors

since the turn of the millennium.

Its nocturnal aura has been further enhanced in the early 21st century

by the installation of a new beacon

that casts a spectacular beam through the Parisian night sky.

This powerful spotlight no longer signals the tower to aircraft,

since the Paris skies have been closed to them.

It now shines out over the French capital and its suburbs

for the pleasure of all.

For over 30 years, the brilliant Gustave Eiffel

and his eccentric Iron Lady went through uncertain times,

but, together, they worked wonders,

and have made Paris a magnet for travellers from all over the world.

During World War I, wireless telegraphy saved France

from defeat by thwarting German attacks.

Nowadays, nothing is too daring for it to please the crowds

on special popular celebrations like Bastille Day.

A visionary work and the adventure of a lifetime for its creator,

the Eiffel Tower has never ceased to reinvent itself.