|
| THE FERRIS WHEEL - The chief wonder of the Fair of
1893 was the work of George Washington Gale Ferris, a man born west
of Chicago. At a Saturday afternoon club dinner, in a city
chop-house, while the Fair was building, Mr. Ferris conceived the
idea of the wheel. He there, on the moment, fixed on the size, the
construction, the number of cars at thirty-six, the number of seats
in each car, the admission fee, the plan of stopping six times in the
first revolution to load and another revolution without stopping, and
these details, as then instantly recorded on paper, were never
altered. This offers one of the most remarkable births of completed
ideas to be found in the realms of psychology. The characteristic of
the Ferris Wheel is its tension spokes - that is, the spokes that are
really in use are always stretched, and only the spokes below the
axle are in use; by holding up the
lower arc of the wheel,
they support the upper arc, making a perpetual arched bridge. The
object of the Ferris Wheel is merely pleasure. The sight-seer is
elevated two hundred and fifty feet above the ground. The movement
is gentle and nearly noiseless. There are cogs on the edges of this
vast double wheel, and these cogs work by chains into the cogs of a
train of lesser wheels, so that the device is like a clock-train.
The axle was forged under the Bethlehem hammer, whose model was shown
in the Transportation Building.
This axle is forty-five
feet long, thirty-two inches in diameter, and seventy tons in weight.
It is the largest piece of steel ever forged. The steel towers on
which this axle rest are one hundred and forty feet high, and are put
into the earth thirty-five feet deep. The wheel cost $380,000, and
had earned its entire cost on September 1, 1893, when it forwarded to
the Exposition $25,000 as royalty on the first profits. |
