Marshall Brain

Behold, the Ferris wheel. But where did it come from? Meet George Ferris, born in Illinois in 1859. George started out as an Engineer, and graduated from Resister Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Originally he specialized in building steel frames for tunnels and bridges. However, when the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893 rolled around, Ferris aimed big. He wanted to build something that could rival the Eiffel Tower, which was built for the Paris Exhibition of 1889. His answer, the Ferris wheel. Originally George called his invention an observation wheel. The wheel resembled the wheels you’d see on a bicycle. It had spokes radiating from the axel to reinforce the shape and stability of the wheel. Although people had previously designed smaller, similar contraptions out of wood, George’s design was different in several important ways. First, it was huge. The supporting towers were almost 150 feet high, and the wheel itself was 264 feet high. Second, it used much more steel. At the time, the axel was the largest piece of steel ever made in the United States. It weighed 46 and a half tons. Between 40 to 60 people could ride in each of the wheel’s three dozen gondolas as its twin thousand pound steam engines pushed the massive ride through several revolutions. Over the course of the exhibition, over one million people rode the Ferris wheel, and it’s imitators sprung up across the states. This iconic ride became a vital part of amusement parks around the world.

So, how genius is this inventor? On the American Dream scale, he gets a two. Although George successfully built the Ferris Observation Wheel, legal problems and imitators prevented him from realizing the full benefits of his invention. On the benefit to humanity scale, he gets a three. The Ferris wheel is designed to do one thing; entertain people, and it does a magnificent job. On the ripple effect scale, he gets a three. Observation wheels based on Ferris’ design can be found in amusement parks across the world, and new ones are built every year.

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