The Ferris Wheel: Round and Round

The highlight of countless fairs, theme parks or riverbanks today, Ferris wheels have been relentlessly turning for more than a century now. They are the late-19th century product of a group of engineers, who applied their ingenuity and courage to the design of an enormous, technologically-innovative structure, which would make headlines worldwide. The Ferris wheel was named after the man who constructed one of the first for Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

ENGINEERING CHALLENGE

In 1890, the architect Daniel Burnham received the important commission of managing the exposition in Chicago, organised to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival on the American continent. Burnham challenged engineers to create something that would rival the Eiffel Tower, which had amazed the world in the 1889 French Exposition in Paris. Many responded with sketches of similar towers, but this wasn’t what Burnham was looking for: he asked them to come up with “something novel, original, daring and unique.” 

WHAT GOES AROUND

George Washington Ferris Jr., a thirty-three-year-old engineer from Pittsburgh, presented his idea: a structure that was similar to the Eiffel Tower in scale, but that could slowly rotate and even carry passengers, who could enjoy the view from different levels. This idea was treated with scepticism: Burnham doubted the structure was safe on the scale that Ferris suggested. Many safety tests on much smaller models were done to convince him that the project was viable. Finally, in December 1892, Ferris was given permission to build the wheel. He did so in just four months. Seventy-five metres high, it had thirty-six cars and was capable of carrying a total of sixty passengers. It was the tallest structure in Chicago at the time. But who would ride on it?

AMERICAN DREAM

Amazingly, Americans did. Over the nineteen weeks following its launch, more than 1.4 million people took a ride on the wheel, paying a 50-cent fee each. But despite its popularity, after the fair ended, Ferris struggled to attract passengers. Having travelled on it once, there was now nothing new to view. Ferris died bankrupt in 1896 and in 1906 the wheel was disassembled, dynamited and turned to scrap. But Ferris’s wheel lived on: with the expanding network of roads and railways, the leisure and tourism industry took off. Countless Ferris wheels popped up, not just in funfairs and festivals, but on boardwalks and city riverbanks across the world. Today, Ferris’ wheel offers an easy way to see the sights from far above the crowds and from the comfort of a car.