EIFFEL, Gustave Travaux scientifiques exécutés à la tour de trois cents mètres de 1889 à 1900. Paris, L.Maretheux 1900
4to. (iv) + 262pp, engraved portrait frontis of Eiffel, 4 plates and tables and many text ills and photos. Orig. printed wrappers. Outer margins of first and last few leaves with some water-damage. Some damp-staining to margins of portrait frontis., though not affecting printed surface. Presentation stamp from Eiffel. A rare item. The Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 Paris Exposition, also served as the focal point of the 1900 Exposition. To celebrate this latter event, Eiffel produced a large and sumptuous pair of folio volumes which describe and illustrate the design and construction of the tower. However, he was stung by the many critics who considered the whole edifice a useless and extravagant folly and was at pains to point out the scientific uses to which it was put. The present volume, published the same year as the great folio work, brings together all the information on these scientific aspects from it in a smaller and altogether more manageable format. Because of its great height and open structure, the tower was, as Eiffel himself writes, an incomparable meteorological observatory, and as early as 1889 he had installed instruments to measure atmospheric pressure, air temperature, humidity, rainfall and evaporation, and so on. Because he had always been involved with large-scale engineering works, he was particularly interested wind force and speed and here he compares some of his findings with those of Langley at the Smithsonian in Washington. His studies in wind were to lead directly to his interest in aeronautics and as early as 1892 he installed a laboratory on the second platform of the tower 120m above ground level, from which the earliest experiments on the free-fall of bodies took place. Other experiments described here include telephotography and further aspects of meterology, as well as the physiological effects on the human body of ascending to such a height, together with a long account of the origins and construction methods of the tower itself.
£650
This item is listed on Bibliopoly by Elton Engineering Books; click here for further details.