By the late 1880s it was pretty bloody obvious that industrialization and new technology had changed the world immeasurably from the way it had been just decades before.
We're used to things changing decade by decade, but this has not been the usual pattern in human history. Indeed after the Fall of Rome things went downhill for a thousand years give or take. Talk about a slump.
It wasn't until the 1700s that people began to realize that the technology of the Roman Era had been surpassed in most of Europe.
It wasn't until the 1880s when the phrase "Industrial Revolution" began to catch on to describe what was happening in Western Civilization.
Eiffel Tower
Location: Paris, France
Year completed: 1889
Height: 984 feet to the top of the uppermost observation deck, 1,063 feet to the top of the antenna.
Claim to fame: Built to commemorate the Centennial of the French Revolution and to serve as the ceremonial entrance to the World's Fair held in Paris in 1889. The tower is actually designed to be easily disassembled because it was meant to be temporary. Indeed, there were calls several times after the Exposition of 1889 to tear "the monstrosity" down. In 1902 the tower was struck by lightning (see above), causing the lights and elevator to short out. To prevent damage from lightning from harming the tower, the upper 300 feet were almost completely rebuilt.
Novelist Guy de Maupassant hated the tower with a passion. It is said that he often ate at a restaurant on the first deck, because it was the one place in Paris he didn't have to look at the thing.
Status: Over the objections of many Parisians, designer Gustave Eiffel received a permit for the tower to stand for 20 years, afterwhich it was expected to be dismantled (that would be in 1909). However, by then the tower had become the most popular tourist attraction in Paris and was also serving as an excellent place to instal radio transmitters and big electric advertisements for products such as Citroen cars! The City of Paris voted to leave the tower up.
When Hitler visited Paris after the Nazi occupation, he was unable to go up the tower because the elevator had been sabotaged and he didn't feel like walking up all those stairs. Hitler also ordered the tower destroyed in 1944 as the German Army retreated from Paris. The Nazi commander in Paris didn't have the heart to do this, and disobeyed.
At the time of its construction, no structure ever built had used so much structural iron, and nobody has built a taller iron structure since (the perfection of steel girders pretty much doomed iron in buildings anyway).
The Eiffel Tower dwarfed all other structures of the day (see below) and would remain the tallest structure in the world for 41 years. But it isn't about height is it? The Eiffel tower is also rather strikingly beautiful in its industrial minimalism.
