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La Dame de Fer (Eiffel Tower) · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Jacques Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: and there's Charles Brand and there's Jerry Roland out there,
0:19
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. That's right, The
0:25
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower Edition at Long Last. Yeah, you've been there, right, Yes,
0:30
Speaker 1: I love the Eiffel Tower. It's great. I don't care
0:34
Speaker 1: what anyone says about tourist traps. It can be a
0:37
Speaker 1: little disheartening there at the bottom when you're you know,
0:40
Speaker 1: they're selling glow noodles and dumb chot keys and stuff
0:42
Speaker 1: like that. But block all that out in the Eiffel
0:46
Speaker 1: Tower is an amazing, amazing thing to behold. It is amazing. Um,
0:51
Speaker 1: it's also chuck. I don't know if you notice or not,
0:53
Speaker 1: but it is where I developed my fear of heights. Really,
0:57
Speaker 1: it happened on the Eiffel Tower. I was never, for ever, ever,
1:01
Speaker 1: for a moment in my life afraid of heights until
1:04
Speaker 1: I went up the Eiffel Tower. And it took me
1:06
Speaker 1: like an hour to get down because I was so
1:08
Speaker 1: afraid of falling off, even though it's impossible to fall
1:12
Speaker 1: off because like there's fencing everywhere, like you can't fall off.
1:16
Speaker 1: But I mean I must have looked like the biggest
1:18
Speaker 1: psycho trying to come down the steps of this thing,
1:22
Speaker 1: and it happened. I was like seventeen. I was with
1:24
Speaker 1: my dad and sister and you didn't take the elevator. No,
1:27
Speaker 1: we walked up the first floor and we got to
1:29
Speaker 1: the top and I looked down and it was just
1:31
Speaker 1: like lights out that just from the first floor. You were, yeah,
1:36
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I've never been higher than that, but I've
1:39
Speaker 1: I've had a fear of heights ever since then. Well,
1:41
Speaker 1: I think these days. Uh was your dad like man, No, No,
1:47
Speaker 1: he was never like just kidding um now he just
1:50
Speaker 1: quietly judged me exactly. The first two floors, I think
1:54
Speaker 1: of the only ones you can still walk up, um
1:58
Speaker 1: by staircase. But uh, previously you could. You could walk
2:02
Speaker 1: all the way to the tippy top. In fact, you
2:04
Speaker 1: said ten steps. Yeah. The first couple of weeks the
2:08
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower was open. If you wanted to go to
2:10
Speaker 1: the top, you had to walk up, and that took
2:12
Speaker 1: an hour for people to climbing stairs. For an hour. No,
2:16
Speaker 1: I would lose my mind because I'd be up so high.
2:19
Speaker 1: I would just start crying. Yeah, I mean I would
2:22
Speaker 1: have had heart failure probably halfway up, so neither one
2:25
Speaker 1: of us would have made it. It would have Yeah, No,
2:28
Speaker 1: it would have been a lot for sure. Um And
2:31
Speaker 1: apparently during well we'll talk about that later. There's a
2:35
Speaker 1: little teaser for you. You You guys don't even know what
2:37
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. So when you come up on the
2:39
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower, the first thing you're gonna walk upon is
2:42
Speaker 1: what's known as the Esplanada, which is that that whole
2:47
Speaker 1: big ground level part of the Eiffel Tower with those
2:50
Speaker 1: four massive, massive iron pillars at cardinal, north, southeast, and west. Yes,
2:58
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to miss, and they cover something like
3:01
Speaker 1: four acres of footprint between them. I think they're like
3:04
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand square feet or something like that. More than that. Um,
3:09
Speaker 1: And like you said, they're all oriented to the cardinal directions,
3:13
Speaker 1: and if you follow upwards, it's very tough not to
3:16
Speaker 1: look up when you're at the Eiffel Tower. Up you
3:20
Speaker 1: you have to be a real jerk, you know, like
3:22
Speaker 1: Castanza level jerk to go to the Eiffel Tower and
3:24
Speaker 1: not look up. But um, you would, you would see
3:27
Speaker 1: that each of these four pillars go up, up, up,
3:30
Speaker 1: and they come together, um a little further up, a
3:32
Speaker 1: little above the second platform, and um they go all
3:36
Speaker 1: the way up in a single joint tower from that
3:39
Speaker 1: moment on. And it's really kind of neat if you
3:42
Speaker 1: stop and think about what you're looking at, these four
3:45
Speaker 1: for um posts kind of starting separately and then coming
3:48
Speaker 1: together to form this this tower. Um. But it's also
3:52
Speaker 1: just a marvel of engineering. Like I had always heard
3:56
Speaker 1: that was like an engineering masterpiece or whatever. But and
3:59
Speaker 1: so I researching, and I had no idea exactly with
4:02
Speaker 1: that man, But it is an masterpiece of engineering for sure. Yeah.
4:07
Speaker 1: And it's a you know, it's a lovely scene aside
4:09
Speaker 1: from all the trappings of tourism. Uh. There's a lot
4:12
Speaker 1: of green space around it, there are other monuments, it's
4:16
Speaker 1: right there by the river. Uh. It's it's just a
4:18
Speaker 1: really kind of a lovely scene. Like if you can
4:21
Speaker 1: manage to find some off hours to go where it's
4:25
Speaker 1: not quite so crowded, which I have done, Um, you
4:28
Speaker 1: really get a different sort of experience. But it is
4:32
Speaker 1: what it is. It's a it's a it's one of
4:33
Speaker 1: the biggest tourist attractions in the world. So it's like,
4:37
Speaker 1: you know, you can't go stand on the the popular
4:40
Speaker 1: edge of the Grand Canyon without being surrounded by hundreds
4:43
Speaker 1: of people. UM, so don't expect to just sort of
4:47
Speaker 1: keep that in the back of your head. Sure, I
4:49
Speaker 1: mean it's the number one, it's the most visited paid
4:54
Speaker 1: tourist attraction in the world. I didn't know that. I
4:56
Speaker 1: believe something like three million people have been there. But
5:00
Speaker 1: that's just counting the paying customers. That's not including the
5:04
Speaker 1: cheap skates like me and you, Me and my brother
5:07
Speaker 1: and sister in law and niece who went and visited
5:09
Speaker 1: and didn't pay to go up. Most recently, we just
5:13
Speaker 1: walked around and kept walking. I've never been up. Oh
5:17
Speaker 1: you haven't you just three times? Never even had the
5:21
Speaker 1: urge to stand in those lines and go to the top.
5:24
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, chuck. You just go onto YouTube
5:26
Speaker 1: and people have filmed it before. You don't have to
5:28
Speaker 1: don't have to do anything. You don't have to leave
5:30
Speaker 1: your house. And I saw the crowds on those elevators
5:33
Speaker 1: and at the top, and I was like, I don't
5:34
Speaker 1: need this, I don't like it. I'd rather just walk
5:37
Speaker 1: around and drink some wine and look at it. Yeah,
5:40
Speaker 1: I mean it's really impressive. Just walking around the basis
5:42
Speaker 1: of the whole thing, like, you definitely get a feel
5:44
Speaker 1: for it. And yeah, if you're afraid of heights, it's
5:46
Speaker 1: all you need to do. Um. So, talking about this thing,
5:51
Speaker 1: there's there's actually three levels that you can get to.
5:54
Speaker 1: There's that first level where I lost my mind. Then
5:57
Speaker 1: it goes further up to a second level, and then
5:59
Speaker 1: there's a third level and third levels like almost nine
6:02
Speaker 1: feet in the air. It's about three a little less
6:05
Speaker 1: than three ds that that third platform. And at each
6:08
Speaker 1: of these platforms there's like stuff to do. It's not
6:11
Speaker 1: just like a steel platform that you step onto and
6:14
Speaker 1: look out and that's it. There's restaurants, there's shops on
6:18
Speaker 1: that top platform where so many people apparently like two
6:21
Speaker 1: people a day propose. Um. There's like a champagne bar. Um.
6:25
Speaker 1: It's there's just a lot of really neat, little interesting
6:28
Speaker 1: details that make the Eiffel Tower the Eiffel Tower. But
6:31
Speaker 1: even more than that, even more than just this the
6:34
Speaker 1: you know, the glow noodles that you can only get
6:37
Speaker 1: there at the Eiffel Tower. Um, what makes it so
6:41
Speaker 1: unique is just the design of it, the execution of it,
6:45
Speaker 1: the fact that it's still around, and then also um,
6:48
Speaker 1: some of the things that have happened, Like it's it's
6:50
Speaker 1: an iconic structure, and when that many people flock to
6:54
Speaker 1: it every year for more than a century, Um, it's
6:57
Speaker 1: going to have like a pretty rich history to you. Yeah,
7:01
Speaker 1: I mean, um, you talked about the restaurants. If you
7:04
Speaker 1: want to eat at the nicest restaurant, it'll be the
7:07
Speaker 1: Jewels Urn And I was just kind of curious about
7:10
Speaker 1: their menu. It looks very good. But it looks so good,
7:12
Speaker 1: it is pricey. It is your your seven course dinner
7:16
Speaker 1: tasting menu is gonna run you about two seventy five
7:18
Speaker 1: bucks each euros dollars buck a Roogs. Uh. And that's
7:24
Speaker 1: without its two thirty euros I think. And that's without
7:27
Speaker 1: wine or anything like. I think it's without wine. It
7:30
Speaker 1: didn't say anything about with a pairing, but um, it
7:33
Speaker 1: only goes up from there. So I imagine it's quite
7:36
Speaker 1: a dining experience. Maybe one day I'll save about my
7:39
Speaker 1: bucks and make a reservation. Because if you do have
7:42
Speaker 1: a reservation, you can you can kind of skip most
7:46
Speaker 1: of the line and go straight there, which is kind
7:48
Speaker 1: of nice. Yeah if you Yeah, you can just take
7:50
Speaker 1: an elevator straight to the Jewels Burn restaurant. I'm sad
7:53
Speaker 1: because I'll probably never eat there because I'll be too
7:55
Speaker 1: scared to go up. Yeah. OK, care she can go
7:58
Speaker 1: to another great restaurant and just pretend you're off the ground.
8:03
Speaker 1: But that's the point. I don't want to pretend like
8:05
Speaker 1: your feet are firmly planted on the ground. And another
8:07
Speaker 1: cool thing that they have is uh, and this is
8:11
Speaker 1: something that I didn't know because I've never been up
8:12
Speaker 1: there is uh, Gustav Eiffel built himself an apartment up top.
8:18
Speaker 1: And this thing has not really been touched since then.
8:22
Speaker 1: I mean they've they've kept it in order, but um,
8:24
Speaker 1: I think ed said they had recreated it. But apparently
8:27
Speaker 1: that's the real thing that has just sort of left untouched. Um.
8:31
Speaker 1: It's got a living room with a table, couch, a piano,
8:34
Speaker 1: grand piano, a few desks, kitchen, bathroom. There is no
8:38
Speaker 1: bedroom and by all accounts he probably did not sleep there.
8:41
Speaker 1: But back in the day in Paris, it became quite
8:44
Speaker 1: the talk of the town and just made um rich.
8:48
Speaker 1: Parisians just seethed with jealousy, and he was offered huge,
8:52
Speaker 1: huge sums of money from people just to like airbnb
8:56
Speaker 1: it for a night, and he declined every single time.
8:58
Speaker 1: He never allowed anyone to rent it out and spend
9:01
Speaker 1: the night. Well, you know, one of the things that
9:03
Speaker 1: I keep running up against during research of the Eiffel
9:06
Speaker 1: Towers that it was a democratizing structure, because up to
9:10
Speaker 1: the point when the Eiffel Tower opened to the public,
9:13
Speaker 1: if you wanted a really amazing view of Paris, you
9:15
Speaker 1: basically had to rent a hot air balloon ride that
9:17
Speaker 1: was your your one shot at it. And you had
9:19
Speaker 1: to be very very rich to do that, to go
9:22
Speaker 1: up in a balloon, and and so I mean that's
9:24
Speaker 1: just the way it was until Gustave Eiffel and then
9:27
Speaker 1: the the leaders of Paris and France came along as
9:30
Speaker 1: it was to build this three tower um and open
9:33
Speaker 1: it to the public. I mean, yeah, you had to pay,
9:35
Speaker 1: but it was a reasonable price and just about everybody
9:38
Speaker 1: could afford it. And and now you could walk up
9:40
Speaker 1: and see these amazing views of Paris that to that
9:42
Speaker 1: point had been reserved only for the very wealthy, which
9:45
Speaker 1: again I just keep seeing it referred to as a
9:48
Speaker 1: democratizing structure. All right, So let's talk about the man himself, right, Yeah,
9:53
Speaker 1: Gustave eiffel Um, who is widely credit is the guy
9:58
Speaker 1: who created this this structure, but it was definitely a collaboration,
10:02
Speaker 1: and I don't he never seemed to make any any
10:05
Speaker 1: secret of that. But he was definitely the head cheese
10:08
Speaker 1: on the whole thing. But he didn't create this whole
10:10
Speaker 1: thing by himself. I think you mean the head brisk
10:14
Speaker 1: I met head cheese cross, so he was. I can
10:18
Speaker 1: never get over that word. Um, it's terrible. He was
10:21
Speaker 1: born in eighteen thirty two and was an engineer by trade.
10:24
Speaker 1: I went to engineering school at uh cal Tech. Now
10:30
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to do that. You want
10:31
Speaker 1: me to say it? Okay? He went to the Cole
10:34
Speaker 1: Central des Arts manufacturers. That's right, and uh he was
10:39
Speaker 1: well regarded as an engineer all over France and Europe.
10:43
Speaker 1: Um had a consultancy firm, had his own workshop, had
10:46
Speaker 1: his own construction company. And it should be noted that
10:50
Speaker 1: he was an engineer first and foremost. He was not
10:53
Speaker 1: an architect. He was obsessed with function um and mechanics
10:58
Speaker 1: and strength of any structure he built, because he built
11:01
Speaker 1: things like railroad bridges, where he really needed it to
11:04
Speaker 1: be strong and maybe pretty. Second, um, he did like
11:08
Speaker 1: things to look nice. It's not like that's all he
11:10
Speaker 1: cared about. But he was very big into structure and
11:14
Speaker 1: form and function. Uh. And was also a big believer
11:17
Speaker 1: in iron as opposed to steal, which you know, this
11:20
Speaker 1: one could have been all steel. So it was around
11:22
Speaker 1: could he steal? But for something this big, he was like,
11:26
Speaker 1: iron is what it has to be built out of. Well,
11:30
Speaker 1: that's what he was like, you know, that was his trade,
11:32
Speaker 1: Like he knew iron, and had he moved into steel,
11:36
Speaker 1: he would have been out of his depth. This is
11:37
Speaker 1: not a project where one should be out of their depth, right.
11:40
Speaker 1: But then also steel would have been prohibitively expensive. It
11:44
Speaker 1: was still a pretty new technology, so I thought that
11:47
Speaker 1: was another reason he didn't use steel. But so as iron,
11:50
Speaker 1: and it's a specific kind of iron, it's um puddled
11:53
Speaker 1: raw iron to where during the the the smelting process
11:57
Speaker 1: you actually swirl it would keeps the impurities from crystallizing
12:02
Speaker 1: into the structure of the of the iron. So it's
12:04
Speaker 1: actual raw iron. That's what the the Eiffel Tower is
12:07
Speaker 1: made out of. But if you put those two things together,
12:10
Speaker 1: that he's an engineer, not an artist, and his his
12:13
Speaker 1: his expertise is in iron. All of it kind of
12:16
Speaker 1: culminates into this the Eiffel Tower. It's like it makes
12:20
Speaker 1: total sense what you're looking at, Like it couldn't have
12:22
Speaker 1: been anything else. Um. But it also kind of underscores
12:26
Speaker 1: just how much of a masterpiece it is under those
12:29
Speaker 1: two constraints. Yeah, and he was Another little fun fact
12:33
Speaker 1: is when the person that was charged with building the
12:36
Speaker 1: internal structure of the Statue of Liberty died, he came
12:40
Speaker 1: in as an emergency replacement and he took on that
12:43
Speaker 1: project and he built that internal lattice work the Great
12:46
Speaker 1: Statue of Liberty. Uh. And he also financed the Eiffel
12:50
Speaker 1: Tower largely um. The Paris and France said hey, let's
12:55
Speaker 1: let's have this contest because we have a World's Fair
12:58
Speaker 1: coming up in eighteen nineteen nine and we want a big,
13:00
Speaker 1: big tower. What did I say, eighty nine? And he Uh,
13:07
Speaker 1: he got one point five million francs from the state
13:11
Speaker 1: is seed money, but it was gonna cost about six
13:14
Speaker 1: point five million. And this became one of the first
13:18
Speaker 1: sort of Uh, what we look at now is how
13:20
Speaker 1: you finance projects like this one of the first ones
13:23
Speaker 1: to do it like this public private partnership. Well, yeah,
13:27
Speaker 1: I mean he went out in and issued shares. Uh,
13:30
Speaker 1: he started an LLC, issued two kinds of shares and
13:34
Speaker 1: raised the other five million francs to build this thing,
13:37
Speaker 1: and as a result had twenty years um to recoup
13:43
Speaker 1: money from ticket sales and souvenirs and champagne bottles and
13:46
Speaker 1: stuff like that, in which he would pay the stuff back,
13:50
Speaker 1: and in that time he and his shareholders made a
13:52
Speaker 1: lot of money in the process. Yeah. But what I
13:55
Speaker 1: saw was he was such a good businessman that he
13:57
Speaker 1: managed to get the you know, all the all the
14:00
Speaker 1: proceeds from you know, admission and concessions and all that
14:04
Speaker 1: stuff for twenty years from the exposition founders. But then
14:08
Speaker 1: he also with the people he went and raised the
14:10
Speaker 1: money from, they didn't get a huge cut of that either.
14:13
Speaker 1: So he made out like a total bandit in this deal. Um,
14:16
Speaker 1: he didn't screw anybody over, swindle anybody. It was just
14:19
Speaker 1: a really good deal that he made for himself. But
14:22
Speaker 1: it required a lot of vision to like he you know,
14:25
Speaker 1: he put his own his own took us in his
14:27
Speaker 1: own reputation on the line. Um with this one big project. Yeah,
14:31
Speaker 1: it may have been the kind of thing where they
14:33
Speaker 1: made a certain amount of money back that was kept.
14:35
Speaker 1: I don't really know, because his shareholders made a lot
14:38
Speaker 1: of money to like you, if you invested in the
14:40
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower, you didn't do it out of the goodness
14:42
Speaker 1: of your heart. You made some dough sure, sure, but
14:45
Speaker 1: I think there was a lot of a certain amount
14:47
Speaker 1: of like um municipal pride in in that project, especially
14:51
Speaker 1: with the proponents of the project UM and the whole
14:54
Speaker 1: the whole design contest to to create an iconic structure
14:58
Speaker 1: for the ten eighty nine World Fair in Paris. Um.
15:02
Speaker 1: Apparently it was at first kind of vague, and I
15:05
Speaker 1: even saw that it was um Uh. It was Eiffel
15:08
Speaker 1: himself who suggested that they have this design competition, and
15:12
Speaker 1: if that isn't the case, he at the very least
15:14
Speaker 1: kind of guided the details of what they were looking
15:17
Speaker 1: for until it basically was his tower. Um. The other
15:21
Speaker 1: big competitor was a guy named um Jules Bourdet, and
15:25
Speaker 1: he wanted to make his three D tower out of stone,
15:29
Speaker 1: which was total insanity. Would have killed everybody it would
15:33
Speaker 1: have It would have crumbled immediately. I don't know if
15:36
Speaker 1: they ever would have even been able to successfully finish it.
15:39
Speaker 1: Apparently the there there's a big push and pull intention
15:43
Speaker 1: between Eiffel's iron and boot Boord Bourdet's stone in this side,
15:50
Speaker 1: this kind of transition between modern and traditional and modern
15:54
Speaker 1: in the form of Eiffel's tower one out. That's right.
15:58
Speaker 1: I think we should take a break, okay and talk
16:01
Speaker 1: about what happened there in the lead up to nine
16:04
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, so you mentioned that it
16:38
Speaker 1: was a collaboration, uh, and not just in the building
16:42
Speaker 1: of it obviously, which I think range from a hundred
16:45
Speaker 1: and fifty to three hundred people at any given time,
16:48
Speaker 1: right little know, In fact, Eiffel did not build it himself,
16:50
Speaker 1: saying he did not, Uh, it was designed by other
16:54
Speaker 1: people to The initial design was by Emil Boy new
17:00
Speaker 1: Gear and Maurice Coclean. And you know, apparently this first
17:06
Speaker 1: design wasn't just like with anything else. It's not like
17:09
Speaker 1: they drew it up on paper and that was it. Um.
17:12
Speaker 1: It wasn't that great. It was four iron pillars that
17:14
Speaker 1: met near the top like we're sort of familiar worth
17:18
Speaker 1: and it was connected by grids, but it wasn't that hot.
17:21
Speaker 1: They went back to the drawing board, sent it to
17:24
Speaker 1: an architect named Stephen uh Sevestre. You, I was gonna
17:29
Speaker 1: say earlier, you don't need me at all, but yeah
17:31
Speaker 1: you do, Salvesta. Sure is that how you say it? Sure?
17:36
Speaker 1: All right? That inspires a lot of confidence. Um. And
17:41
Speaker 1: he made it really freely, added a lot of Victorian flourishes.
17:47
Speaker 1: They got it back from him and said, why don't
17:49
Speaker 1: we meet in the middle, get rid of a lot
17:50
Speaker 1: of this stuff, keep some of the stuff. And what
17:53
Speaker 1: they ended up with was, um, sort of a magical
17:57
Speaker 1: little compromise on the final design. Yeah. It was, like
18:00
Speaker 1: I said, a real collaboration. Um. And what came out
18:04
Speaker 1: of that collaboration was just something something really amazing. UM.
18:08
Speaker 1: And the fact that each each group or each person
18:11
Speaker 1: or you know, each everyone involved, they all worked for Eiffel. Um.
18:15
Speaker 1: The first two were his chief chief engineers, and uh,
18:19
Speaker 1: where is going to call him? Sylvester was his chief architect,
18:22
Speaker 1: I believe, and then along with Eiffel himself, all of
18:25
Speaker 1: them kind of adding to and subtracting and like I
18:27
Speaker 1: don't like that or I do like this. It came
18:30
Speaker 1: to fruition. UM, and he Eiffel purchased the designs from
18:35
Speaker 1: his employees, so that he personally owned the design outright,
18:40
Speaker 1: which allowed him to go, um, raise money himself and
18:44
Speaker 1: uh take in all of the the admission and concession
18:47
Speaker 1: fees that he was going to break in over the
18:49
Speaker 1: next twenty years too. Yeah, man, I wonder, I don't know.
18:54
Speaker 1: I looked up the brand worth and and the only
18:58
Speaker 1: thing I could find was from like seven years ago.
19:00
Speaker 1: In the Eiffel brand at that time was worth like
19:05
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty billion dollars euros. As I saw
19:10
Speaker 1: that too, Oh, I thought that was in dollars. Was
19:12
Speaker 1: that in euros? I'm pretty sure it was in euros,
19:15
Speaker 1: But it's I mean, that is just a crazy amount
19:18
Speaker 1: of money. And it's a shame that he couldn't work
19:19
Speaker 1: out some sort of a stake in that early on
19:22
Speaker 1: that could have been passed down to his heirs. Yeah,
19:26
Speaker 1: because he he was able to break that in for
19:28
Speaker 1: just the first twenty years. And the reason why twenty
19:30
Speaker 1: years is such a significant number, Chuck, I did not
19:33
Speaker 1: know this, but the original part of that design competition
19:36
Speaker 1: was that this this structure, the winning structure, was going
19:40
Speaker 1: to only stand for twenty years and then it would
19:42
Speaker 1: be disassembled to make way for something new, and that
19:46
Speaker 1: was really in the tradition of World's fairs. Um, it's
19:50
Speaker 1: very rare for any structures to remain for very long,
19:54
Speaker 1: more than a couple of decades after a World's Fair,
19:56
Speaker 1: because they're just they're meant to be temporary. They're to
20:00
Speaker 1: be part of the world's fair and to commemorate the
20:02
Speaker 1: world's fair. But then you have more World's Fairs that
20:04
Speaker 1: come along, and progress is to be made, and so
20:07
Speaker 1: the old structures get torn down and new ones get
20:10
Speaker 1: um built in their place. So the Eiffel Tower was
20:14
Speaker 1: going to just live for twenty years and then be disassembled. Yeah,
20:17
Speaker 1: I bet you that does have something to do with it,
20:19
Speaker 1: because if you look at any most World's Fair structures
20:23
Speaker 1: over the years, they do end up looking very dated,
20:26
Speaker 1: Like this is the only one I can think of
20:28
Speaker 1: that really had this indelible iconic design, um, And they
20:33
Speaker 1: probably just don't want that reminder of you know, the
20:37
Speaker 1: Knoxville World's Fair right years later. It looks really kind
20:41
Speaker 1: of silly, right, Well, the Sun's Fear is still around, weird,
20:44
Speaker 1: is it? Yes, as far as I know, Yeah, yeah,
20:49
Speaker 1: it was Knoxville with the sun's fear. I'm almost positive.
20:52
Speaker 1: But there was another building built. I mean, like, if
20:55
Speaker 1: you look at some of the buildings that were built
20:57
Speaker 1: for this Paras exposition in eighty nine, Um, these are
21:01
Speaker 1: like major, huge buildings that today we would spend untold
21:06
Speaker 1: number count like countless money to to preserve and keep
21:10
Speaker 1: from crumbling. Um, they just torn down twenty years. There's
21:14
Speaker 1: one called the Gallery Day Machine UM, and it some
21:19
Speaker 1: critics say that it was actually an even greater masterpiece
21:23
Speaker 1: of um iron work and modernity than the Eiffel Tower itself.
21:28
Speaker 1: They tore it down into Yeah, so that's just kind
21:32
Speaker 1: of how it was with the World Fare, and that's
21:34
Speaker 1: how it was supposed to be with the Eiffel Tower.
21:35
Speaker 1: But if you start to dive into how the Eiffel
21:38
Speaker 1: Tower was constructed, it's abundantly clear that Um Gustav Eiffel
21:43
Speaker 1: never intended for his tower to be taken down. He
21:46
Speaker 1: built that thing Ford tough man. If you want to
21:53
Speaker 1: make a French person's head spend, tell him that the
21:56
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower is built forward tough Oh my go I
22:00
Speaker 1: was trying to think of a French car. Uh, what's
22:03
Speaker 1: the one? Yeah, n all tough the tough. So they
22:09
Speaker 1: start construction in January seven. Um. Obviously that's a pretty
22:13
Speaker 1: tight timetable to pull something like this off before the
22:16
Speaker 1: World's Fair, and it came down to the wire. But uh,
22:20
Speaker 1: they started um building the tower itself in July seven.
22:26
Speaker 1: They were building you know, that might not um make sense,
22:29
Speaker 1: but they were doing those foundations. It took a long
22:31
Speaker 1: time just to get the foundation work done. And he
22:34
Speaker 1: had a manufacturing um warehouse and facility about six kilometers away,
22:39
Speaker 1: so most of it was built there in pieces. They
22:41
Speaker 1: would bring it over and ship it over to the
22:44
Speaker 1: site to kind of assemble it and put it together.
22:47
Speaker 1: And you know, this thing is right by the river,
22:50
Speaker 1: so you've got you know, you don't have the most
22:53
Speaker 1: stable uh you know, land base in which to drill down.
22:59
Speaker 1: And they ended up. Uh did we do a show
23:01
Speaker 1: on tunnels or was it just it must have been
23:04
Speaker 1: bridges or something, because I think we talked about the
23:06
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Bridge being built like this. Yeah, may have been it,
23:10
Speaker 1: or maybe it was the New York aqueducts. I don't know,
23:12
Speaker 1: but basically they had to do sort of the same
23:14
Speaker 1: thing as they had to go under sea level, so
23:16
Speaker 1: they had to work in these compressed air chambers, which
23:21
Speaker 1: was very, very dangerous, and they ended up only losing
23:24
Speaker 1: one human life during the construction, which is remarkable. It
23:27
Speaker 1: is remarkable. And this thing was also completed in record
23:30
Speaker 1: time too, Like I mean you said it was a
23:32
Speaker 1: tight schedule. To build this thing in twenty one twenty
23:37
Speaker 1: six months today would be impressive. So they did this
23:41
Speaker 1: in you know, the eighteen eighties and only lost one worker.
23:45
Speaker 1: Part of that was because Gustave Eifel himself, um, was
23:49
Speaker 1: well known for basically being an additional foreman on the
23:53
Speaker 1: job side. He was not one of these guys who
23:55
Speaker 1: went and smoked cigars and just hung out all day
23:57
Speaker 1: at the country club with his buddies. Like he was
23:59
Speaker 1: hand is on on his his most important projects, and um,
24:04
Speaker 1: the Eiffel Tower was definitely one of those most important projects.
24:07
Speaker 1: So because of this dedication to safety and this level
24:10
Speaker 1: of oversight from the guy himself, uh that that just
24:14
Speaker 1: one person like the person and you have to die there,
24:17
Speaker 1: like no one will believe it if nobody died. So
24:19
Speaker 1: they had they pushed one guy off the top. A Pierre,
24:23
Speaker 1: what's that over there? I know, Well, you've been down
24:25
Speaker 1: been down and pick it up for me. So the
24:31
Speaker 1: other thing he had going in his favor was as
24:33
Speaker 1: far as getting it built in record time, was he
24:35
Speaker 1: had a great crew. He had, Like I said, he
24:37
Speaker 1: was a big builder anyway, so he had all these
24:39
Speaker 1: regular workers that were really really experienced, especially iron workers,
24:44
Speaker 1: and uh, he was able to pull it off using
24:48
Speaker 1: uh method of riveting, um bolts, pretty good rivets better,
24:54
Speaker 1: way better. I mean, this is the These rivets are
24:57
Speaker 1: the reason why I say, like, he did not mean
24:59
Speaker 1: for this thing to be take in Ampart in twenty years.
25:01
Speaker 1: So what they did was they use heated rivets. And
25:04
Speaker 1: here's here's how that works. You bring over this sub
25:07
Speaker 1: piece that's built together with temporary bolts, and then you
25:11
Speaker 1: remove those bolts and you replace it with a heated rivet.
25:15
Speaker 1: And this is on site, Like they had blacksmiths hammering
25:19
Speaker 1: this thing on site. Apparently made quite a racket and
25:23
Speaker 1: you would heat it in or you would heat it
25:25
Speaker 1: up and knock it in, and then as the thing cools,
25:28
Speaker 1: it shrinks and that just cinches everything really really tight.
25:31
Speaker 1: That is trying to cinch together after it's cooled. And
25:34
Speaker 1: so you've got you know, two thirds of this thing.
25:37
Speaker 1: Two thirds of the rib these ribbits were actually installed
25:41
Speaker 1: on site with human power and hammers. Yeah, and each
25:45
Speaker 1: side of the rivet was hammered into a head, so
25:48
Speaker 1: it's not like a bolt where you could just take off.
25:50
Speaker 1: I don't know how you would get those things apart, frankly.
25:53
Speaker 1: And that this this seal like so was I guess
25:57
Speaker 1: then the seal was was so tight because it cool
26:00
Speaker 1: old and since some tighter together and then the actual
26:03
Speaker 1: um One of the reasons why the Eiffel Tower is
26:05
Speaker 1: just so revered. It's just incredibly precise. Like each piece,
26:09
Speaker 1: like you said, was made off site and then maybe
26:12
Speaker 1: partially assembled and brought to the to the job site,
26:16
Speaker 1: but they were they were created in the eighteen eighties
26:18
Speaker 1: within a tenth of a millimeter precise. And if they
26:22
Speaker 1: weren't a tenth of a millimeter precise, Uh, they were
26:25
Speaker 1: sent back to the factory to be um altered so
26:28
Speaker 1: that they were brought into that level of precision. So
26:31
Speaker 1: the entire Eiffel Tower is within a tenth of a
26:35
Speaker 1: millimeter precision, the entire thing. That's just astounding to me. Yeah,
26:40
Speaker 1: and it's really cool too, and that they you know,
26:43
Speaker 1: you obviously you're building this thing from the ground up.
26:45
Speaker 1: And they used scaffolding until they made that first floor plateau,
26:50
Speaker 1: and then from that point on that was their new foundation,
26:54
Speaker 1: so they could actually be up there in the tower
26:57
Speaker 1: itself supported itself from that point forward as they moved
27:00
Speaker 1: up right, and um, this is just so scary to me.
27:05
Speaker 1: But the the as they worked further and further up,
27:08
Speaker 1: they got steam cranes that they attached to what would
27:12
Speaker 1: um eventually be the rails used by the lifts, the
27:16
Speaker 1: very specific elevators of the U Eiffel Tower. And uh,
27:20
Speaker 1: these steam cranes just climbed up and up and up.
27:23
Speaker 1: It just worked their way up the tower. And just again,
27:27
Speaker 1: this is eighteen eight the eighteen eighties, and you're in
27:30
Speaker 1: a steam crane attached to the Eiffel Tower that you're
27:33
Speaker 1: building hundreds of meters up. I can barely even say
27:38
Speaker 1: these words. You would have been the second guy that died. Yeah,
27:42
Speaker 1: because your knees gave out, exactly. I just I can't
27:46
Speaker 1: even deal right now. So they they eventually finish. Um,
27:51
Speaker 1: as the World's Fair approaches. Um, it didn't even open.
27:54
Speaker 1: This is how tight it was. It wasn't even open
27:56
Speaker 1: to the public until nine days into the fair, and
27:59
Speaker 1: it took two more weeks for those elevators to be operational.
28:02
Speaker 1: So if you were those first people, you paid a
28:05
Speaker 1: little bit of money to climb seventeen hundred and ten
28:09
Speaker 1: steps to the top, like you mentioned earlier, takes about
28:12
Speaker 1: an hour, and a lot of people still did that remarkably,
28:16
Speaker 1: and they all smoked cigarettes at the time, So I
28:18
Speaker 1: can't imagine that was fun, that's right. So, UM. One
28:22
Speaker 1: of the things about the Eiffel Tower, uh, that I
28:26
Speaker 1: didn't know about, was that there was a tremendous amount
28:30
Speaker 1: of protest when it was announced, when when the design
28:33
Speaker 1: was unveiled or the plans for it were unveiled, um,
28:37
Speaker 1: mostly by the French artistic community. There was a famous
28:41
Speaker 1: petition again which I didn't know about, UM, called the
28:45
Speaker 1: the the Petition of the three hundred, three hundred artists,
28:48
Speaker 1: three hundred architects, UM, three hundred musicians. Basically anybody who
28:52
Speaker 1: is anyone in the Parisian art and cultural scene at
28:56
Speaker 1: the time signed this petition basically saying like, don't build
28:59
Speaker 1: this thing. This is horrible, this is it's going to
29:02
Speaker 1: look like an industrial iron smoke stack. And and we
29:05
Speaker 1: don't want this to to mar the beautiful landscape of
29:09
Speaker 1: Paris that has been put together over the centuries. And um,
29:13
Speaker 1: I mean that was it was a substantial public outcry
29:16
Speaker 1: and like kind of a campaign against the Eiffel Tower
29:20
Speaker 1: that Eiffel and the Parisian Exposition um planners had to
29:24
Speaker 1: deal with. But they, I guess ultimately the artists were there.
29:30
Speaker 1: Their protests fell on deaf ears because the tower was made.
29:34
Speaker 1: But one of the great things about it was Uh.
29:37
Speaker 1: In the years after, some of those petition signers came
29:41
Speaker 1: out and publicly apologized to Eiffel. They said that they
29:43
Speaker 1: had they'd gotten it wrong, that that the Eiffel Tower
29:46
Speaker 1: is just that, you know, that beautiful. They finally kind
29:49
Speaker 1: of came around to understanding what was beautiful about it?
29:53
Speaker 1: Did guide Rick can't No, he was one who ever
30:00
Speaker 1: did uh de mapossan he uh. He was a very
30:03
Speaker 1: famous writer who would lunch at the base of the
30:06
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower very frequently because it was the only place
30:09
Speaker 1: in Paris he could go eat where he didn't have
30:11
Speaker 1: to look at the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, so he wrote
30:15
Speaker 1: and this this became one of the sort sort of
30:18
Speaker 1: the most famous, uh, put down or the Eiffel Tower.
30:23
Speaker 1: He said, this high and skinny pyramid of iron letters,
30:27
Speaker 1: this giant, ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built
30:31
Speaker 1: to carry a colossal monument of cyclops, but which just
30:35
Speaker 1: peters out into a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney. Ps.
30:40
Speaker 1: I fart in its general direction. Nice, I didn't see
30:45
Speaker 1: that coming, and he he was. You might not recognize
30:49
Speaker 1: his name, but I'll bet you'd recognize his pen name,
30:51
Speaker 1: Jackie Collins. Oh interesting, I just know that that's because
30:57
Speaker 1: I made it up. So Eiffel himself, the man, I'm sure.
31:01
Speaker 1: I'm sure his feelings were a little bit hurt by
31:03
Speaker 1: some of these artists. He wanted to be beloved. But um,
31:06
Speaker 1: he wasn't made of puddle eye. He was not, uh,
31:09
Speaker 1: he said, uh announced just sort of paraphrase here. Um
31:13
Speaker 1: he said. For my part, I believe that the tower
31:15
Speaker 1: will possess its own beauty. I hold that the curvature
31:18
Speaker 1: of the monuments four outer edges, which is as mathematical
31:21
Speaker 1: calculation dictated it should be, will give a great impression
31:25
Speaker 1: of strength and beauty, For it will reveal to the
31:27
Speaker 1: eyes of the observer, the boldness of the design as
31:30
Speaker 1: a whole. Moreover, there is an attraction in the colossal
31:33
Speaker 1: and a singular delight to which ordinary theories of art
31:36
Speaker 1: are scarcely applicable. And I think that kind of sums
31:40
Speaker 1: it up. It's like, man, this is a massive, amazing,
31:45
Speaker 1: gorgeous feat of engineering, and like you can't think of
31:49
Speaker 1: it with your little sculpture brain and try and look
31:53
Speaker 1: at it as as that kind of art. Like you
31:55
Speaker 1: got to rethink what art and architecture are. And I
31:59
Speaker 1: think he's told right. I mean, it's it's amazing when
32:01
Speaker 1: you look at this thing and you can sort of
32:04
Speaker 1: see maybe back then how it didn't fit the landscape
32:07
Speaker 1: and people might have thought it was obnoxious, but uh
32:10
Speaker 1: they were wrong. Yeah, it's I saw a UM, I
32:15
Speaker 1: guess an architecture blog on the Eiffel Tower and it
32:20
Speaker 1: had it broken down by like loads and stresses and
32:22
Speaker 1: geometry and all that. But on one of the pages
32:25
Speaker 1: it was um it was showing a graph of how
32:29
Speaker 1: wind pressure increases with height, right, And when they traced
32:35
Speaker 1: the curve of the different wind pressures as it went up,
32:40
Speaker 1: it made one. It made the curve of the Eiffel Tower.
32:45
Speaker 1: And he said later that the Eiffel Tower was designed
32:48
Speaker 1: by the wind, and that's what he was talking about,
32:51
Speaker 1: Like they used math to determine what the perfect shape
32:55
Speaker 1: of this was to put up this to to have
32:58
Speaker 1: the same wind pressure. So the base is under the
33:01
Speaker 1: same load from wind that the top is because of
33:05
Speaker 1: the taper. So it was like it's math personified. It's
33:09
Speaker 1: math and and science and engineering um in in iron form.
33:14
Speaker 1: I had no idea about that until I started researching this,
33:17
Speaker 1: and it just made me appreciate this so much more. Um.
33:21
Speaker 1: And it's also really really strong too, Like the thing
33:24
Speaker 1: can hold four and a half times Uh, it's its
33:28
Speaker 1: own weight. It's like it's never going to fall down.
33:31
Speaker 1: And a lot of people were worried about that when
33:32
Speaker 1: when Iffel was building it, and he publicly said, I
33:35
Speaker 1: take personal responsibility if this thing ever collapses. Uh, he
33:39
Speaker 1: just knew it wasn't going to because that's how precise
33:41
Speaker 1: he was, and that's how smart he was with his
33:43
Speaker 1: calculations and the people he was working with. Two. But
33:46
Speaker 1: but it's it's just it's a it's masterful. It is
33:50
Speaker 1: it's it's nature revealed, just carved out of the sky
33:54
Speaker 1: and iron. All right, well, let's take another break and
33:57
Speaker 1: we'll come back and talk about why that thing it's
33:59
Speaker 1: still stand today and wasn't torn down twenty years later
34:02
Speaker 1: right after this. Alright, so Eiffel built this thing to last,
34:39
Speaker 1: like we said, and uh, during that twenty year period,
34:43
Speaker 1: as he was breaking in money from glow noodle sales,
34:48
Speaker 1: he uh he decided to start trying to make it useful,
34:52
Speaker 1: uh and give it a practical purpose so maybe they'll say, well,
34:56
Speaker 1: we kind of got to leave it up now. So
34:58
Speaker 1: he started doing all these in resistance experiments and those
35:02
Speaker 1: were fine, those were all well and good, but it
35:04
Speaker 1: was uh, it was radio that really is what saved
35:08
Speaker 1: it when in a Morse code signal was sent from
35:13
Speaker 1: the tower to another part of Paris and it was
35:16
Speaker 1: a big success. So they put in a permanent radio
35:19
Speaker 1: installation there, and all of a sudden they were like, hey,
35:23
Speaker 1: this thing is really valuable, especially with wars approaching, which
35:27
Speaker 1: they obviously didn't know that at the time, but they
35:29
Speaker 1: were sending messages, you know, overseas to London and thousands
35:33
Speaker 1: of kilometers away, and they said in nineteen ten, all right,
35:38
Speaker 1: this is actually pretty valuable to us now the military
35:42
Speaker 1: is involved, it's playing roles in our wars, so you
35:47
Speaker 1: can keep it up for seventy more years. And they
35:50
Speaker 1: then tore it down in Yeah, and that was the
35:53
Speaker 1: end of the Eiffel Towel. Never forget that day. That was. Yeah.
35:59
Speaker 1: Do you remember how excited Reagan was, like you have
36:03
Speaker 1: against the Eiffel Tower man and Jimmy Carter descried quietly.
36:06
Speaker 1: It was very sad. Yeah, I thought that was the
36:08
Speaker 1: right reaction to that, you know, but that's the big split.
36:11
Speaker 1: You know, there's two kinds of people in the world. Now.
36:14
Speaker 1: They gave him seventy more years, and obviously in I
36:17
Speaker 1: didn't even look it up, but I assume that's when
36:19
Speaker 1: they said, and maybe we should just all agree that
36:21
Speaker 1: it's it'll probably be here forever. Yeah. Yeah, So it
36:24
Speaker 1: survived even Adolf Hitler, the big jerk. He apparently, after
36:28
Speaker 1: the Nazis had occupied um Paris for years, as the
36:32
Speaker 1: war was seemingly coming to an end, he ordered not
36:36
Speaker 1: just the Eiffel Tower, but all monuments in Paris to
36:39
Speaker 1: be torn down. And the guy who was running the
36:42
Speaker 1: France on behalf of the Nazis, a general Dietrich von
36:46
Speaker 1: Scholitz just never got around to it. I guess he
36:49
Speaker 1: was kind of resisting. But one of the speaking of resisting,
36:52
Speaker 1: one of the um little pieces of World War two
36:55
Speaker 1: history was that the French resistance cut the cables for
36:59
Speaker 1: the elevators to the Eiffel Tower, so that if any
37:02
Speaker 1: Nazi sightseers on his day off wanted to go up
37:05
Speaker 1: and see the sights, he had declined the sev ten stairs.
37:08
Speaker 1: He wasn't going to take an elevator as long as
37:10
Speaker 1: the French resistance was around. That's right. And then the
37:14
Speaker 1: Nazis were liberated from Paris. Unless you talked to Senator
37:18
Speaker 1: elect Tommy Tubberville. Did you hear that? Yeah, I heard
37:22
Speaker 1: all that. Former Auburn football coach now Senator elect uh
37:26
Speaker 1: said has said a few times now that Paris was
37:29
Speaker 1: liberated from the Communist and the Socialist Like, no, they
37:32
Speaker 1: were Nazis. Yeah, there's one other piece of World War
37:37
Speaker 1: two trivia I had not heard about, what the Eiffel Tower.
37:39
Speaker 1: There was a dog fight that went under under the
37:43
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower. People. That's the thing that planes want to
37:46
Speaker 1: try and do now as a sort of a Dare
37:49
Speaker 1: slash stunt. You should not do that. No, no, no,
37:53
Speaker 1: you really you just really I think it's worth saying again, Chuck,
37:56
Speaker 1: you don't fly a plane under the Eiffel Tower. I
37:58
Speaker 1: don't care who you are. Don't fly a plan period.
38:01
Speaker 1: If you're if you're a German. Uh, if you're a
38:04
Speaker 1: German fighter ace and you've got an American P fifty
38:08
Speaker 1: one Mustang on your tail, you're gonna take some risks. Apparently,
38:12
Speaker 1: the the dirty Nazi flying ace, I thought he was
38:16
Speaker 1: gonna shake him by going under the Eiffel Tower, and
38:19
Speaker 1: that P fifty one Mustang pilot went right after him
38:21
Speaker 1: and shot him down over Paris. Amazing, and't it? I
38:25
Speaker 1: mean that they had a dog fight under under the
38:28
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower. That's astounding. Uh. Because this thing is made
38:33
Speaker 1: of iron, there's a very one, big, big key to
38:36
Speaker 1: keeping this thing durable, and that is paint. Um. It
38:40
Speaker 1: is strong, iron is very strong. It's also malleable. Um.
38:44
Speaker 1: I think we've already mentioned that it does flex in
38:46
Speaker 1: the wind some. It shrinks with temperature changes and gets
38:50
Speaker 1: larger with temperature changes. And that's all well and good,
38:53
Speaker 1: but you gotta have a really good paint job on there.
38:57
Speaker 1: And I think it's been painted eighteen times times over
39:00
Speaker 1: the years, and they're on a seven year cycle now,
39:03
Speaker 1: which they started in eighteen nine nine. UM, And it
39:07
Speaker 1: takes about eighteen months to remove what paint they remove.
39:12
Speaker 1: And it's been various colors over the years. Um, Eiffel
39:15
Speaker 1: Tower brown is what we call it now. But Ed,
39:18
Speaker 1: who helped us put this together with with zero irony,
39:21
Speaker 1: I think, said it is often depicted as simply red.
39:26
Speaker 1: I didn't pick up on that. I think it probably
39:28
Speaker 1: doesn't even know that's a band. I think it's tastes
39:30
Speaker 1: are a little harder than that, right, I don't know.
39:32
Speaker 1: I think he's got a bunch of varied tastes. Like
39:35
Speaker 1: I could see him knowing about simply ready. Just I
39:37
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe he did mean that. It's also been
39:40
Speaker 1: yellow orange, sort of a yellowish brown. Uh. And like
39:44
Speaker 1: I said, now they call it since nineteen sixty eight
39:46
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower brown. But it's lit up at night. It's
39:49
Speaker 1: marvelous to behold. Um, twenty thousand lightbulbs on this thing. No, No, no,
39:56
Speaker 1: five billion light bulbs. I don't think that's right, dude.
39:58
Speaker 1: I looked everywhere the only place I can find that
40:01
Speaker 1: was in Business Insider. I've seen it a bunch of places,
40:05
Speaker 1: but I guess it it got Yeah, I could see that. Man,
40:09
Speaker 1: you're probably right. I mean on the Eiffel Tower website
40:11
Speaker 1: it's just twenty lights. So I'm gonna go with that,
40:13
Speaker 1: all right, I'll go with that one too, stupid five
40:17
Speaker 1: that's a big disparity. But it's all lit up, like
40:21
Speaker 1: they have the lights, and then they also have these
40:23
Speaker 1: projectors projecting light and um, five billion projectors. It's brilliant
40:29
Speaker 1: to look at at night, and uh, I suggest you
40:31
Speaker 1: go at night. It's it's great during the day of
40:34
Speaker 1: course as well, but at night is when it's really
40:36
Speaker 1: really special. Right. Um. I've looked up their electric bill
40:41
Speaker 1: and it's apparently about one point one million dollars a year,
40:45
Speaker 1: which is too bad. I guess it's more in line
40:47
Speaker 1: for twenty thousand lights. I was like, that's pretty low
40:50
Speaker 1: for five billion lights. It's like al Gore's electric bill. Wow. Hey,
40:57
Speaker 1: I try to take shots at both sides, right you can, man, Yeah,
41:00
Speaker 1: for sure, you're a centrist. So, um, that repainting stuff
41:05
Speaker 1: it takes eighteen months, did you say that? And they
41:08
Speaker 1: take fifteen tons of the old paint off every time
41:11
Speaker 1: when it's a when the whole job is done, I
41:14
Speaker 1: think it's like sixty tons of new paint. Right, Yes,
41:17
Speaker 1: that is so much pain, it's crazy. But um, the
41:20
Speaker 1: last time we were there, like three to three years ago, Um,
41:24
Speaker 1: I remember being shocked that it was brown. I had
41:28
Speaker 1: totally forgotten it. And anytime you see it, it's it's
41:31
Speaker 1: shadowed enough that it looks black or maybe like a
41:35
Speaker 1: dark gray or something. It does not look like it
41:36
Speaker 1: does in person and pictures. Right, But they apparently there's
41:40
Speaker 1: an optical illusion where the higher up in the sky
41:44
Speaker 1: the Eiffel Tower is um, that part seems darker than
41:49
Speaker 1: the stuff closer to the ground. So they actually do
41:52
Speaker 1: kind of an ombre thing where they painted in this
41:55
Speaker 1: the same color, but yeah, grated shade to where the
41:59
Speaker 1: stuff at the top is the lightest shade and then
42:01
Speaker 1: towards the bottom it's the darkest shade, so that the
42:03
Speaker 1: whole thing has a uniform color to it. Emily and
42:07
Speaker 1: I always have a running joke from that we got
42:10
Speaker 1: from Saturday Night Live. There was one sketch where one
42:14
Speaker 1: girl to the other and said, that is one severe ambre.
42:19
Speaker 1: So we say that now whenever we see you a
42:21
Speaker 1: lady with an ombre hairstyle, Man, when's the last time
42:24
Speaker 1: you saw somebody with an ombre? I don't know. Is
42:26
Speaker 1: that not a thing anymore? I don't I don't see people,
42:28
Speaker 1: think so I don't see I haven't seen people either.
42:31
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just assuming it died out because nobody's
42:33
Speaker 1: going to the hairdresser anymore. Uh. We should maybe do
42:37
Speaker 1: a short stuff on the elevators themselves. It is probably
42:41
Speaker 1: a show into itself, but um, I guess the easiest
42:44
Speaker 1: way to say it is that these are not like
42:47
Speaker 1: any elevators in the world, obviously because they go up
42:51
Speaker 1: on a on a slope and then straightened out. So
42:54
Speaker 1: they're built, obviously, um, just for the Eiffel Tower, and
42:59
Speaker 1: they would work only there, and they work on a
43:01
Speaker 1: hydraulic system. And here's my fun fact that has greased
43:05
Speaker 1: every day with beef fat no from the Jewels Verne restaurant. No,
43:13
Speaker 1: I had not heard that. That's a great fact, man. Yeah,
43:16
Speaker 1: And apparently a lot of the machinery is um some
43:19
Speaker 1: of the original stuff from eighteen ninety nine that they
43:22
Speaker 1: have just sort of modernized and retrofitted over the years. Yeah,
43:26
Speaker 1: I've got one more elevator fact for you. So for
43:29
Speaker 1: the original opening, Otis Elevator was invited to build one
43:33
Speaker 1: of the elevators. Yeah. I think they actually build three
43:40
Speaker 1: of the ones that are there now. But this is
43:42
Speaker 1: for the ex exposition and to show off, to show
43:45
Speaker 1: how how great their elevator was, Otis sent some representatives
43:49
Speaker 1: up to switch out the cable with rope. And then
43:51
Speaker 1: once they had the cable that was holding the elevator
43:55
Speaker 1: aloft changed out to rope. They cut it with hatchets
43:59
Speaker 1: to show off how the emergency brake system worked. Yeah,
44:04
Speaker 1: holy cal Yeah, and they all cross their fingers behind
44:08
Speaker 1: their backs. Yeah, exactly exactly. But if you look at
44:11
Speaker 1: some of the original um, the original drawings, they were
44:14
Speaker 1: like sit down elevators with like pews basically like you
44:17
Speaker 1: find in a church, like a few a few rows
44:20
Speaker 1: of pews, where people just sit down on these things
44:23
Speaker 1: and go up, up, up. You know, now that I'm
44:25
Speaker 1: looking at this list from Business Insider, it also says
44:29
Speaker 1: it costs one point five million to build and in
44:33
Speaker 1: in dollars. I saw that elsewhere too. M hmm. That
44:38
Speaker 1: sounds like confusion to me, because they gave them one
44:40
Speaker 1: point five million francs and it really costs six point
44:43
Speaker 1: five I don't trust anything on this list. Now, five
44:46
Speaker 1: billion lines? Is that on the list that I sent you?
44:51
Speaker 1: That was from Live Science, not Business Insiders? Well, the
44:54
Speaker 1: same exact list was on Business and Business Insider. Yeah,
44:58
Speaker 1: that's what we should call them. So somebody science is
45:01
Speaker 1: usually pretty Uh I'm guessing Business Insider copy pasted from
45:05
Speaker 1: Live Science. Live Science is usually pretty accurate. That's why
45:08
Speaker 1: I fell for the five billion. I was like, why
45:10
Speaker 1: would I fall for that from Business Insider? Now I
45:12
Speaker 1: understand I fell for it from Live Science. All right,
45:15
Speaker 1: well that's more acceptable. What else you got anything? I
45:18
Speaker 1: got nothing else? Go see this thing. It's worth it. Yeah, definitely,
45:21
Speaker 1: It's worth worth traveling to Paris to see and then
45:24
Speaker 1: just turn around and leave. Uh well, chuck, this is
45:28
Speaker 1: coming out I think on New Year's Eve, isn't it?
45:32
Speaker 1: I think? So? Yeah? Right? Should we should we wish
45:35
Speaker 1: everybody happy New Year's now or after listener mail? Uh? No,
45:38
Speaker 1: let's do it now. You know we say it every
45:41
Speaker 1: year that without you guys, we wouldn't even have jobs.
45:45
Speaker 1: So it doesn't change over the years. It just gets
45:48
Speaker 1: better and better, and we really really value everyone that's
45:52
Speaker 1: listening to this right now in a big, big way. Yeah,
45:55
Speaker 1: thanks for listening to us, everybody. We hope that we've
45:58
Speaker 1: kind of helped you in some small measures through because
46:00
Speaker 1: you guys have helped us through. Appreciate you, guys, So
46:04
Speaker 1: thank you. Okay, Well, since I said thank you to
46:08
Speaker 1: all of you listening out there in podcast land, that
46:11
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this
46:15
Speaker 1: pet Turkey. This from Steph Steph t Hey guys, Turkey
46:20
Speaker 1: podcast is my new favorite. We used to have a
46:22
Speaker 1: pair of white domestic turkeys that we kept as pets.
46:25
Speaker 1: They slept in my flower bed every night and look
46:27
Speaker 1: like your yard ornaments. Um. I can attest to their superhering,
46:32
Speaker 1: as the tom could hear a bag of feed being
46:35
Speaker 1: open from a mile away. We kept the feed in
46:38
Speaker 1: a trash can and I had to use the lid
46:40
Speaker 1: as a shield, Captain America style so he wouldn't hop
46:43
Speaker 1: into the can and take me with him. He was
46:46
Speaker 1: a jerk. The female, however, was actually really really sweet
46:49
Speaker 1: and duscile, uh docile. My special need son was just
46:54
Speaker 1: learning to walk at the time, and she would walk
46:56
Speaker 1: beside us ever so slowly, and then sit down for
46:59
Speaker 1: him to pet her. I was so heartbroken when she
47:02
Speaker 1: died that I went out in the field and read
47:04
Speaker 1: a Bible verse over her body. She says, don't judge me.
47:08
Speaker 1: We would never judge you for that. That's amazing. They're
47:11
Speaker 1: also wild turkeys in the area and often had to
47:13
Speaker 1: stop the car to let them cross the road. I
47:15
Speaker 1: love to stick my head out of the window and
47:16
Speaker 1: gobble at them because they would always raise their heads
47:19
Speaker 1: and gobble back. And here's a lady coming again into
47:23
Speaker 1: the gobble. I love it. That's from Steph T. Thanks
47:27
Speaker 1: Steph T. Is it really Steph T? Well? I mean
47:31
Speaker 1: ste F hard Stuff letter T Right, But there was
47:35
Speaker 1: a joke I made in the Tricky episode where like
47:38
Speaker 1: somebody was named Tom T like it was Tom Turkey.
47:42
Speaker 1: So maybe this is she said she gobbles. Maybe. Well,
47:48
Speaker 1: if you're a Turkey and you want to get in
47:49
Speaker 1: touch with this about her Turkey episode or for whatever reason,
47:52
Speaker 1: you can send us an email. The Stuff podcast at
47:55
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com and again, Happy do Year, everybody.
47:59
Speaker 1: Have you know you here? Stuff You Should Know is
48:04
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
48:07
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
48:10
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M hm
48:19
Speaker 1: hm