City - Chicago,IL - The first Ferris Wheel 1893 Postcard

Colorized photo from 1893 Original title: Large Ferris wheel at the World's Columbian Exposition Location: 1130 Midway Plaisance, Chicago, IL Photographer: Unknown The Columbian Exposition of 1893 was the home of many firsts, they introduced all sorts of technology, foods and in this case rides. When they were designing the fair, they wanted a sort of high class affair and didn't want low class things like the midway. But they learned that they can profit greatly for having one. They wanted something educational for the most part but also wanted a grand feature that could rival the Eiffel tower, which was made for the Expo in France. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr, just happened to be in the right spot at the right time. As he was hired to inspect the steel structures of the buildings, he heard that they wanted something grand. It just so happens he had a neat idea, and designed what we call today, the Ferris Wheel. Though in those days it was just known as the Chicago Wheel or the Great wheel. It ran on steam power, using cables underground pulled it like they would a streetcar. The wheel was huge, it stood at 264ft, which is a 100ft taller than the wheel that's at Navy Pier now. It weighed in at 4500 tons, the axle alone was 74 tons. The cost seem to vary between $350,000 to $750,000 depending who you ask (its about $10-20 million today). It was known world wide as a very expensive thing that served no practical use, just like the Eiffel tower. Each car was 27ft long by 13ft wide. It had 40 swivel chairs, and each car would hold between 40-60 people in it. There was a grating that kept crazy people from jumping out. The wheel would stop every 9 minutes to let 6 cars out and refill, this gave the other passengers a 9 minute window to see the park from a different level. The full ride was two full revolutions which took a total of 20 minutes. The ride cost 50cents on its own (which is $15 today). They could carry anywhere between 1440 to 2160 people in it on one cycle. The wheel moved very slowly, you could walk faster. Over its lifetime, 50 people were married in it, some on horseback. Some crazy ladies stood on the roof as it went around for some insane reason. The wheel traveled around for a while. As the show was only 6 months long, they didn't need it any more, so in 1895 they dismantled it, but not before riding it one last time, which took 8 minutes to go all the way around without stopping. For a while it lived in Lincoln Park in Chicago, at the time there was an amusement park located at 2619-2665 North Clark. By 1904, they dismantled it again, and this time moved it to the World's Fair in St. Louis Mo. By 1906, no one wanted to buy it, they had no use for it, so they destroyed it. In total they used 300 pounds of dynamite, which was placed under the footings where the wheel collapsed in on itself. It took a month to move all the metal away. Some feared that it would fall off the base and simply roll into the city, so they were careful to destroy it right. Then one day in 2007, a survey team wanted to see if they could find the wreckage of the wheel. They used a number of different methods but ended up using a cesium magnetometer. They were able to find bolts of the original foundation in a golf course. But they couldn't find the axle. They finally found something that matched the description some 200ft from the original location. At the intersection of Skinker Blvd and Wydown Blvd in St. Louis they found it. The axle itself is huge, 45ft long, the center was 3ft in diameter by itself. It was too hard to cut it apart using gas torches, so they must have just rolled into a ditch. I'm amazed they moved that thing around at all. It was the largest fully formed piece of metal ever made during that time. It was never dug up, it could very well be that axle, or it could be alien technology, we will never know.