Ferris Wheel Chicago

1893 · Steel Wheel with Tensioned Spokes · Work 71 of 1,871

Ferris Wheel Chicago, 1893, Steel Wheel with Tensioned Spokes

The original Ferris Wheel on the Midway Plaisance in Chicago, thirty-six glazed passenger cars hung around its rim, spoke rods radiating from the forged axle between two braced towers.

What it was used for
A ride concession on the Midway Plaisance of the World's Columbian Exposition, run by Ferris's own company. A ride cost 50 cents on top of the fair admission: two revolutions, the first with six stops for loading and unloading, about twenty minutes in all. Two 1,000 hp steam engines turned the wheel, one of them a spare. It opened on 21 June 1893; between 1 July and 6 November it sold 1,453,611 paid rides for gross takings of $726,805, of which $513,403 stayed with the company. It then ran on North Clark Street in Chicago from 1895 to 1903, at the 1904 St. Louis world's fair, and was dynamited and sold for scrap in 1906. Ferris fought the exposition management over the split of the profits and came out of the lawsuits poorer than he had expected. He died in 1896, aged 37.
What was new
Pleasure wheels existed before, in timber: William Somers put up timber wheels at Atlantic City, Asbury Park and Coney Island from 1891 and patented them in 1893. The difference was the direction of force. Ferris's rims were not in compression but hung from the hub like a bicycle wheel, on adjustable iron rods 65 mm thick. That made the jump from about 15 to 76 metres in diameter possible. The exposition's award committee report states that there were no data and no precedent on the subject, so the methods of calculating and designing had to be originated. Who was first went to court; accounts of the outcome of the patent suit contradict each other.

Connections

Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.

  1. Follows fromTour Eiffel1889Burnham asked the exposition's engineers outright for something to fill in Chicago the place the 984 foot Eiffel Tower had filled in Paris in 1889. A tower 500 feet higher was dismissed as playing second fiddle to Eiffel's genius; Ferris's wheel was the answer instead.Source: Hyde Park Historical Society: The Ferris Wheel · JSTOR Daily: The Big Wheel
  2. EncounteredHollerith's Tabulator1890World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893: the wheel was the centrepiece of the Midway Plaisance, opened 21 June, with 1,453,611 tickets sold between 1 July and 6 November. In the Census exhibit, clerks demonstrated Hollerith's electric tabulating machine on 1890 census data; Hollerith received a bronze medal from the fair.Source: Chicago History Museum: A Wheel With A View · U.S. Department of Commerce Research Library: Championing Commerce at the World's Fair
  3. EncounteredSelling's Calculating Machine1886World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893: George W. Ferris's great wheel was accepted for this fair after three rejected designs; the National Park Service calls it the Ferris Wheel's first fair. At that same fair Selling's calculating machine was awarded a prize.Source: National Park Service, Inventions from the World's Columbian Exposition · Universität Würzburg, Didaktik der Mathematik: Selling Rechenmaschinen

Further reading