What do you think of this fact?
Paris without the Eiffel Tower? Hard to picture. But according to the tower’s official website, that was the plan: the Eiffel Tower was supposed to be dismantled after 20 years.
A building with an expiry date
History.com explains that the tower went up on the Champ de Mars for the 1889 World’s Fair, as its centerpiece, and was meant to be temporary. Gustave Eiffel only got a 20-year permit to use the land. On January 1, 1910, the official site says, the tower was set to become the full property of the City of Paris. “In 1910, the Eiffel Tower could have been demolished!” the site writes.
Eiffel knew he needed a good reason for his tower to exist. So he went looking for a scientific one. According to History.com, the top was used for research, including atmospheric calculations.
Rescue by radio
The real lifesaver turned out to be a brand-new technology: wireless telegraphy. In 1898, Eugène Ducretet made the very first radio contact in Morse code between the Eiffel Tower and the Panthéon, about four kilometers away. In 1899, the tower was already sending signals to London.
Then Captain Gustave Ferrié of the engineering corps, 31 years old at the time, was put in charge of experiments. He set up in a shack at the foot of the south pillar. Eiffel paid for an antenna at the summit, and the range kept growing: links to eastern forts 400 kilometers away, and in 1908 even a distance of 6,000 kilometers. In 1909, a permanent station was built underneath the Champ de Mars.
That did it. Eiffel got his concession extended by another 70 years, starting January 1, 1910. The temporary tower had turned into a giant antenna. During World War I, many German messages were intercepted from its summit, and in December 1921 Radio Eiffel Tower started regular broadcasts.
Not everyone was a fan. In 1887, writers and artists published a protest in the newspaper Le Temps against “the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower,” History.com reports.
Built as a temporary attraction, rescued by a piece of wire on its head.