Eiffel Tower Trivia Quiz

Answer: Paris World Exposition 1889

The Paris World Exhibition in 1889 was not the first World Expo (that was the 1851 Exhibition in London), nor the first in Paris. But as its date coincided with the feast for 100 year since the French Revolution, it had to be something special.
One of the projects for the Paris World Exhibition 1889 was the construction of a very large tower. Over 100 architects and engineers presented their designs, but it was the plan by some engineers of the Eiffel Company that was chosen to be the spearhead of the Exhibition.
The construction started in January 1887 and was officially opened in March 1889 - although there still was some work on the elevators. The final touch was on May 15th, 1889.
The Third French Republic was not quite celebrated: it arose as the result of the Franco-Prussian War, where the Prussians defeated the French Empire.
There is no certainty about the birthday of the city of Paris. The only documented history is that the Romans built a fortification in 52 BC at the location where a local tribe (the Parisii) had already a settlement.
The Olympic Games in Paris 1900 necessitated the construction of some sporting venues. But it did not involve the construction of any decorative high tower.

Answer: It would thus be the tallest construction at the time

At that time, not a single building or construction reached the height of 300 m. There were even some scientists and artists convinced of the technical impossibility to build something this high. But these doubts disappeared when the construction was finished: it stood 300 m high, and many years later it still stands.
Several years after completion of the Eiffel Tower, it was equipped with aerials for radio and television broadcast, which added another 24m to its height. So the total height of the Eiffel Tower has reached 324m since the year 2000.
The Eiffel Tower remained the tallest construction worldwide for about forty years.
The budget for the tower, as provided by the French government, was far insufficient to build the tower. Only a bit less than one quarter of the expenses were funded by the government.
The other red herrings are mere figments of my imagination. The French Revolution had far more than 300 victims, and there were fewer engineers involved in the design of the Tower.

Answer: Stephen Sauvestre

Sauvestre (1847-1919) is the only French architect in this set. Before the Eiffel Tower, he had already worked on the Gas Pavilion for the 1878 World Expo in Paris, and on the Hotel Seyrig in Paris.
Sauvestre worked together with two engineers of the Compagnie des Etablissements Eiffel for the main design of the Eiffel Tower, and Sauvestre was the one of them to sketch the glass pavilion on the first level.
Later works of Sauvestre included some castles in the Limousin region and a chocolate factory in the region Seine et Marne.
Horta (1861-1947) was a Belgian Art Nouveau architect. Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) was born in Germany but changed his nationality to American in 1944. Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was American. All these architects gained far more reconnaissance than Stephen Sauvestre.

Answer: Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier

Maurice Koechlin (1856-1946) was born in the Alsace region, at that time French territory. But when the Prussians were victorious in the Franco-Prussian war, the family Koechlin chose the Swiss nationality (only to revert to the French nationality after the Second World War).
Koechlin joined the Compagnie des Etablissements Eiffel in 1879 and worked many years with this company. When Eiffel retired in 1893, Koechlin became managing director of the firm.
Emile Nouguier (1840-1897) worked at first for a bridge construction company named Ernest Gouin et Compagnie. In 1867 he joined the Compagnie des Etablissements Eiffel and worked on several bridges for this firm.
Nouguier, Koechlin and Gustave Eiffel himself registered in 1884 a patent for bridge pylons of at least 300m height, and their patented construction was also very similar to the Eiffel Tower design.
Fokker (1890-1939) was a Dutch aviation pioneer. Daimler (1834-1900) was a German engineer instrumental in developing the automobile.
Gates (born 1955) founded Microsoft and Steve Wozniack (born 1950) was co-founder of Apple Computers.
Baird (1888-1946) experimented with television. Telford (1757-1834) was known for work on bridges and canals.

Answer: Impact of wind

The wind was the main concern. The higher a construction, the more it experiences wind impact - especially at the higher parts of the construction. Before the start of the construction, Eiffel made several graphical demonstrations of the wind resistance of his tower - and each and every element (including the specific curvature of the columns) was specifically designed to guarantee a maximum wind resistance. Indeed: even during a heavy storm the Eiffel Tower only sways by a few centimetres.
Earthquakes are rare in France. So the risk of an earthquake causing the Tower to collapse, is far less than the other considerations.
To prevent corrosion, the Eiffel Tower is repainted at least once per seven years. It takes each time several tonnes of paint to complete this job.
Cost efficiency was no technical concern. Although the funds were limited, Eiffel and his company had no difficulty to finance the whole project.

Answer: South bank

The Eiffel Tower stands on the Champ de Mars, a park on the south bank of the Seine. To counter the risk of landslide, the foundation of the north (and west) leg rests upon a quite impressive foundation: piles driven into the earth up to 22 m deep, on which concrete slabs of 6m thick rest. The south and east legs, farther away from the Seine, are supported by concrete slabs of "merely" 2m thick.
If you were aware that the Seine river flows from east to west, I'm sure you avoided the "east bank" red herring: there is no east bank of the Seine.

Answer: False

As with all fabulous projects, the Eiffel Tower design met some resistance. About 300 French intellectuals (mostly writers, painters, composers...) organized themselves, and published a critic of the plan because they feared the Eiffel Tower would be detrimental to the reputation of other, older Parisian landmarks. History has shown that these intellectuals (including the painter Adolphe Bouguerau, the architect Charles Garnier, the author Guy de Maupassant and the composer Jules Massenet) were wrong.

The Eiffel Tower has since its opening attracted many visitors to Paris, and intuitively one can conclude most of the visitors from other countries will spend some days in Paris to discover other landmarks as the Louvre museum, the Notre Dame cathedral or the Arc de Triomphe.

Answer: Jules Verne

Jules Verne (1828-1905) was the author among this quartet. He wrote many exciting stories, such as "Voyage au centre de la terre" (translated as "Journey to the Centre of the Earth") and "Le tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours" ("Around the World in 80 Days").
The restaurant on the second floor specializes in gastronomical menus from French cuisine. But it is not the only restaurant in the Eiffel Tower: there is also a (less renowned) restaurant on the first floor (58 Tour Eiffel) and some buffets on the ground floor, first floor and second floor. And for those who like an alcoholic drink: the top floor also has a champagne bar.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was a composer. Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was one of the most famous stage actresses of the time. Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was a painter and sculptor.

Answer: Victor Lustig

Victor Lustig (1890-1947) was the fraud we're looking for. He was born as Robert Miller and started his career by convincing passengers on the transatlantic ocean voyages to invest in a (non-existing) Broadway theatre production.
In 1925 Lustig lived in Paris and read about the cost to maintain the Eiffel Tower. He then concocted a scam in which he sold the Eiffel Tower as scrap iron. Later that year he tried to repeat the trick with other victims, but this time to no avail.
His greatest scam was selling "money boxes" that could duplicate paper money. But when he swindled a Texas sheriff with this scheme, Lustig had to evade rapidly.
Abagnale (born 1948) started his career by impersonating various professions (airline pilot, lawyer, doctor). After a few convictions, he bettered his life and founded a security consultancy agency which helps (among others) the FBI.
Madoff (born 1938) started his career as a stockbroker and investment advisor. In 2008 he was arrested for a massive Ponzi scheme, that he had used to embezzle large sums from almost 5,000 victims.
Kerviel was a trader for the French Société Générale. In 2008 he was arrested for having traded and lost substantially more than the bank's market capitalization.

Answer: Antoine de Lavoisier

Gustave Eiffel ordered the list to be engraved on the bottom of the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, to acknowledge these people for their scientific advances. 70 out of the 72 names correspond to people who were active in the Nineteenth Century. One exception was Jean-Charles de Borda (1733-1799), a mathematician who helped devise the metre as base unit for the SI metric system.
The other was Antoine de Lavoisier (1743-1794), a chemist who isolated hydrogen and oxygen.
Pascal (1623-1662), Descartes (1596-1650) and Fermat (1607-1665) were Seventeenth-Century mathematicians and philosophers.