Eiffel.

Eiffel. GUSTAVE, engineer, was born at Dijon in 1832, and in 1858, only three years after completing his studies at the École Centrale, was intrusted with the construction of the large iron bridge over the Garonne at Bordeaux, and was one of the first to introduce caissons worked with compressed air. The bridge over the Douro at Oporto, the great viaduct of Garabit, in Cantal (described by him in an elaborate monograph, 1889), and that over the Tardes, near Montluçon, and the gigantic locks designed and partly prepared for the Panama Canal were among his most notable achievements and designs; while in the huge framework erected for Bartholdi's statue of Liberty may be seen the germ of the idea which afterwards assumed the form of the colossal iron structure (1887-89) on the Champ-de-Mars in Paris with which his name is identified. The Eiffel Tower contains three stories, reached by a series of elevators or lifts, and the platform at the summit is 300 metres (985 feet) above the ground. About 7,000,000 kilogrammes (a little less than 7000 tons) of iron were employed in its construction; the estimated cost was about £200,000, of which £60,000 was voted by the state, and the remainder supplied by M. Eiffel, who expected to recoup himself out of the admission fees during the twenty years for which he held a concession. In 1893 he was condemned to two years' imprisonment and a fine of 20,000 francs for breach of trust in connection with the Panama Canal works. See Nansonty, La Tour Eiffel (1889); also Engineering for May 3, 1889.