George Washington Gale Ferris did not invent the Ferris wheel.
People were getting into compartments and rotating on axles centuries before Mr. Ferris brought his engineering prowess to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Of course, he did a hell of a job of it. But a long history precedes him.
In the 1600s the Bulgarians had contraptions they called "pleasure wheels" — wooden devices that operated on manpower. Think of a large bike tire with strong men pushing the pedals instead of moldy sneakers: there's your prototype. These were not obscure machines. After their inception in Bulgaria they moved west until Antonio Maguino brought the design from France to the United States in 1848, sitting passengers in wooden packing crates. When the wheel became popular, Charles W. P. Dare manufactured more of them — twenty to thirty-five feet in diameter, $400 to $600. Gradually, metal replaced wood, and steam replaced men: the pleasure wheel was a bona-fide machine. But it wasn't a Ferris wheel yet.
The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 had every potential to become an astounding failure. It is a wonder of history that it did not. It is said that people approaching the midway from afar were so awestruck by its beauty that they frequently broke down and wept.
The fair was the product of incredible genius and tenacity — no small part of which came from George Washington Gale Ferris.
The World's Fair has a distinguished history. The Eiffel Tower is a decorative centerpiece for the fair fourteen years before the event in Chicago. Unfortunately, Eiffel didn't install many moving parts: Ferris sought to one-up him.
Ferris endeavored to build the largest pleasure wheel the world had ever seen. He'd worked in the railroad, bridge and steel industries for some time before 1893 and owned a firm that tested iron and steel, so he understood the strength of the metal and its potential when bonded together in spokes and struts.
Ferris' wheel was a wonder of engineering. The design itself, while ingenious, falls to pieces at the size of everything. The wheel, all 250 feet of it, was supported on two 140-foot steel towers. The axle was a 45-foot piece of solid forged steel — at the time, the largest piece of metal ever created. Imagine turning a four-story building on its side, and you've got a rough idea of how big this thing was. Twin 1000-horsepower steam engines moved the wheel, while passengers rode 60 each in 36 wooden compartments the size of school buses. It was such a massive and complex structure that when it ran for the first time, parts that the construction workers had left unattached in the frame — rivets, hammers, and the like — rained down like a cartoon storm.
An enormous bike wheel. It was taller than the tallest skyscraper in the United States.
Your average Ferris wheel is a much heartier structure than it looks. While construction of the fair's buildings neared completion, a heavy storm wiped nearly everything out; buildings of concrete, of brick. The wheel was virtually untouched.
It took the wheel 20 minutes to make a full revolution. Riders paid half a dollar for a ride; by the time the fair ended Ferris' wheel had earned roughly $727,000. Meanwhile, a tradition was born. You will be forever hard-pressed to find a carnival without either a portable or permanent Ferris wheel.
The tradition of getting stuck with the stars at the top of a revolution is the work of an anonymous, more romantic soul.
The wheel of the Chicago World's Fair met a lingering and tragic end. After moving the wheel twice over short distances in an attempt to maintain its revenue, George Washington Ferris went bankrupt and was forced to sell his creation for $1800. Ferris died nearly penniless; the wheel was taken apart for scrap metal in 1909.
Passing over the landscape in a perfect arc has cross-cultural appeal as well.
http://cellar.org/2006/ferriswheel.jpg
Children playing on a handmade, handpowered pleasure wheel on a trash heap in an Afghan slum.
The image speaks more eloquently than any of us ever could, so I'll keep my bright ideas to myself.
Since the days of George Washington Ferris, pleasure wheels have taken hold all over the globe.
Shortly after the end of the Chicago World's Fair, Walter B. Busset designed a wheel twenty feet taller than Ferris' for the Oriental Exhibition in London. Busset's wheel featured first- and second-class cars and a hollow axle through which passengers could walk for a fee — it's still standing at Earls Court. Busset followed up this wheel with another which featured a car with a ping-pong table.
In 1915, Joseph Strauss built a variation on Ferris' design called the Aeroscope: a twenty-foot wheel with a single car that rotated horizontally while being transported around the axis, providing a full panoramic view.
Today, the largest Ferris wheel on earth is the London Eye, at 500 feet. It's been in operation since 2000 and takes half an hour to make a full revolution.
Meanwhile, designs exist for double- and triple-wheels — concentric Ferris wheels on the same axle connected by gondolas.
The design will never get old. Hopefully.
Sources
Internet Fairground
http://library.thinkquest.org/C002926/history/ferris1.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/C002926/history/ferris2.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/C002926/history/ferris3.html
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferris_wheel
About.com
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blrollercoaster.htm
Bookrags
http://www.bookrags.com/history/popculture/ferris-wheel-bbbb-01/