About book Eiffel's Tower: And The World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, The Artists Quarreled, And Thomas Edison Became A Count (2009)
Pick this up in the airport in NY on the way to Spain and France. Easy read with lots of interwoven facts.The organizers of the 1889 Paris world's fair wanted to build some towering monument to be the centerpiece of their exposition. Many structures were submitted including a giant guillotine but in the end Gustaf Eiffel's unique steel tower was chosen. Though Eiffel at this time was a famous bridge engineer and builder there was no precedent for building such a tower. There was much opposition. Residents sued because it would block their view. People felt they might get electrocuted when lightning hit the tower, or that it would become a giant magnet and pull the nails out of surrounding buildings. 47 of Paris most famous artists and intellectuals signed a protest stating that the tower was ridiculous like a gigantic black factory chimney.It would be when completed the highest man-made structure in the world. Of course it became wildly popular during the fair. Before this people did not have the opportunity to get so high and to look so straight down something we take as unremarkable today. The tower was supposed to be torn down after the fair. Eiffel argued that it was a good observation post for the military and when Marconi invented the radio Eiffel had one installed at the top at his own expense in 1903 and transmitted signals across the English Channel. This helped the committee in charge to finally agree to leave the tower standing.The book describes the three major attractions of the fair: the Eiffel Tower, Buffalo Bills wild West show, and the Thomas Edison pavilion.Some tidbits.Mark twain: "France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals."Thomas Edison visited the fair where his new phonograph was wildly popular and he was hailed as a hero by admiring throngs. He commented on how little work the French did. On the steamship returning to the US he commented that the ocean waves were such a vast amount of power waiting to be harnessed and that he saw no reason why there shouldn't be a device where you could see the person you were talking to on the telephone. But then of course, after inventing the kinescope the forerunner of moving pictures, he said that he didn't think it would amount to anything. It was immediately a huge success people paying a nickel for a 90sec film.Annie Oakley could in fact shoot coins out of the air, was quiet, dignified and treated the lowly and kings equally. She had been held essentially as a slave as a young girl in Ohio where she was from and had never been west of the Mississippi. She retired partly in Pinehurst NC.James Gordon Bennett owner of the New York Herald and very wealthy man set up the Paris Herald during the world's fair and ran it at a loss for years. The Herald was eventually shut down by an investigation started by William Randolph Hearst into the previously long ignored personal columns in the Herald. These were such things as "a woman finds paddling her own canoe dreary task, seeks a manly pilot," or "young lady, good figure, wants to pose for artists," or "masseuses with highly magnetic manners." We have nothing on them today.Paul Gaugin was not selected to show his paintings at the French painting exhibition. He showed them in a Arab Café across the street but did not manage to sell a single one. If only I had been there. To be truthful I didn't finish reading this. Although I enjoyed previous books by Jill Jonnes, this book was as tedious as reading a phone book. There is no build-up to the building of the tower or the fair, instead we are thrust into the story as building begins without any prehistory or building up of tension. The Eiffel Tower is also only a small part of the book itself. While I found the subject matter interesting it reads too much like interesting anecdotes instead of an in-depth history.
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Astonishingly good read -- perhaps moreso for Franophiles. But interesting, nonetheless.
—Joanne
