The Eiffel Tower - Things you didn't know

By Jennifer Darden


Fine, you know the Eiffel Tower as a famous landmark in Paris and you probably realized (or at least had an educated guess) that it got its name from the person who was involved in the designing of it. Actually, Gustave Eiffel also contributed about 80 per cent of the cost of building the tower as well.

However, there are probably a host of things you just didn't know about the Eiffel Tower; some are key knowledgeable factors, others are simply things of passing interest while there are others things that would never have come up as a question in your SAT Reasoning Test, but are still fun things to know.

Firstly, as you know, metal expands when it gets warm so during warm weather the height of the Eiffel Tower increases by up to 1 foot. Secondly, when you think about the Eiffel Tower do you have a color in mind? Many people go for gray; perhaps because that's the color they associate with metal. In fact it has never been gray. Initially it was brown and then it was painted yellow before going back to brown. In 1954 it was painted a reddish-brown, but in 1961 it was back to brown again and has remained that color ever since.

Interestingly, the Eiffel Tower is painted in three different shades of brown; the top is the lightest shade of brown and the bottom the darkest. Other little known facts about the paint job are that it gets painted every 7 years and takes about 25 men 18 months to complete.

Thirdly, for 40 years the Eiffel Tower was the tallest structure in the world; then the Chrysler building topped it.

Here are a few more superfluous, but nonetheless interesting facts about the Eiffel Tower. The structure is lit up at night by 336 projection lamps. Each side of the four sides of the structure has 5,000 small sparkling lamps and the structure manages to consume 7.8 million kilowatts of electricity each year. Other rather silly points include the use of 25,000 trash bags each year and two tons of paper is used simply to print out visitor tickets or which there are 7 million a year.

If you still want to walk to the top of the Eiffel tower you will need to climb 1,665 steps, but an easier way is to use one of the five elevators from the ground level to the second level and then use one of the two double elevators to get up to the top level. These lifts can carry over 1,000 people an hour and if they go wrong, then the wait time to get up to the top of the tower can exceed two hours.

Maybe it's a good idea to put a copy of this article in your back pocket or bag; if one of the elevators goes out of action at least you have something interesting to read while you wait in line, and of course, it's relevant.




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