- [Narrator] 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
the Rensselaer Polytechnical
Institute in Troy, New York.
Originally, he specialized in building
steel frames for tunnels and bridges.
However, when the Worlds
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
the observation wheel.
The wheel resembled the
wheels you'd see on a bicycle.
It had spokes radiating from the axle
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 axle 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 1,000 pound
steam engines pushed
the massive ride through
several revolutions.
Over the course of the exhibition,
over one million people
rode on the Ferris wheel,
and as imitators sprung
up across the states,
this iconic ride became a vital part
of amusement parks across the world.
