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发表于 2004-10-21 19:31:13
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埃菲尔铁塔的一篇是关于争议,一片是关于电梯,虽然并不是完全围绕这个主题,但都可以看到历史与现实的冲突,当初人们的评论,还有一点关于革新的东西。
The Tower stirs debate & controversy
The Eiffel Tower documents - Gustave Eiffel Metal construction in the 19th century The Tower conception and design Construction of the Eiffel Tower The Tower stirs debate & controversy Painting the Eiffel Tower The Tower as a laboratory The Tower as a Radio Broadcaster Illuminating the Eiffel Tower Renovation of the Tower The 72 scientists The Eiffel Tower and artists Exhibitions of the Eiffel Tower Books, Films, CD-Roms.
Various pamphlets and articles were published throughout the year of 1886, then on February 14 1887, with the construction work barely begun, there appeared the Artists' Protest.
The "Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel", published in the newspaper Le Temps, is addressed to the World's Fair's director of works, Monsieur Alphand. It is signed by several big names from the world of literature and the arts: Charles Gounod, Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas junior, Fran鏾is Copp閑, Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, William Bouguereau, Ernest Meissonier, Victorien Sardou, Charles Garnier and others to whom posterity has been less kind. Other satirists pushed the violent diatribe even further, hurling insults like "this truly tragic street lamp" (L閛n Bloy), "this belfry skeleton" (Paul Verlaine), "this mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed" (Fran鏾is Copp閑), "this high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built to carry a colossal monument of Cyclops, but which just peters out into a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney" (Maupassant), "a half-built factory pipe, a carcass waiting to be fleshed out with freestone or brick, a funnel-shaped grill, a hole-riddled suppository" (Joris-Karl Huysmans). Once the Tower was finished the criticism burnt itself out in the presence of the completed masterpiece, and in the light of the enormous popular success with which it was greeted. It received two million visitors during the World's Fair of 1889. The World's Fair
An extract from the "Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel".
Charles Gounod
"We come, we writers, painters, sculptors, architects, lovers of the beauty of Paris which was until now intact, to protest with all our strength and all our indignation, in the name of the underestimated taste of the French, in the name of French art and history under threat, against the erection in the very heart of our capital, of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower, which popular ill-feeling, so often an arbiter of good sense and justice, has already christened the Tower of Babel. (...) Is the City of Paris any longer to associate itself with the baroque and mercantile fancies of a builder of machines, thereby making itself irreparably ugly and bringing dishonour ? (...)To comprehend what we are arguing one only needs to imagine for a moment a tower of ridiculous vertiginous height dominating Paris,just like a gigantic black factory chimney, its barbarous mass overwhelming and humiliating all our monuments and belittling our works of architecture, which will just disappear before this stupefying folly. And for twenty years we shall see spreading across the whole city, a city shimmering with the genius of so many centuries, we shall see spreading like an ink stain, the odious shadow of this odious column of bolted metal.
Charles Garnier Leconte de Lisle Alexande Dumas junior
In an interview in the newspaper Le Temps of February 14 1887, Eiffel gave a reply to the artists' protest, neatly summing up his artistic doctrine.
"For my part I believe that the Tower will possess its own beauty. Are we to believe that because one is an engineer, one is not preoccupied by beauty in one's constructions, or that one does not seek to create elegance as well as solidity and durability ? Is it not true that the very conditions which give strength also conform to the hidden rules of harmony ? (...) Now to what phenomenon did I have to give primary concern in designing the Tower ? It was wind resistance. Well then ! I hold that the curvature of the monument's four outer edges, which is as mathematical calculation dictated it should be (...) will give a great impression of strength and beauty, for it will reveal to the eyes of the observer the boldness of the design as a whole. Likewise the many empty spaces built into the very elements of construction will clearly display the constant concern not to submit any unnecessary surfaces to the violent action of hurricanes, which could threaten the stability of the edifice. Moreover there is an attraction in the colossal, and a singular delight to which ordinary theories of art are scarcely applicable".
Gustave Eiffel
All rights reserved - ?SNTE - 1997-2003
Eiffel Tower and Otis Elevator: a long, once stormy relationship
The Eiffel Tower, one of the best-known structures on Earth, has had a long and once prickly relationship with Otis Elevator Co.
Like lovers who courted in youth, quarreled and separated in the middle years and finally reconciled happily, Otis and Eiffel are together now, creating a memorable experience for more than three million visitors annually.
But it wasn't always like that.
La Tour Eiffel opened in 1889, the centerpiece of a World's Fair marking the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.
Installation of the Otis elevators was not complete on opening day, however. The principals, company President Charles Otis and Gustave Eiffel, the designer, were engaged in a long-distance war of words.
Otis claimed Eiffel's repeated changes in designs and specifications caused the missed deadline, and Eiffel, for his part, threatened to withhold payment for the project, even though by this point it was a money-losing proposition for Otis.
Charles Otis responded to the threat: "After all we have borne and suffered and achieved on your behalf, we regard this as a trifle too much and we will not put up with it."
A controversial project from the start, the tower was scorned by prominent members of French society who feared it would resemble "a gigantic kitchen chimney dominating Paris" and would "eclipse by its barbarous mass" such well-loved monuments as the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame.
But Gustave Eiffel's project nevertheless went forward, and concerns about aesthetics gave way to technical issues. None loomed larger than how to transport people safely and efficiently to the top of the 300-meter (985-foot) tower and points between.
Although elevators were common by that time, no company had done anything quite like running them up an incline inside the tower’s curved legs. What's more, the developers were adamant that only French products would be part of the Eiffel Tower.
Ultimately, French elevators were installed in the higher stages of the tower and two of the other legs using a cogwheel kind of system, but no French company initially bid on the elevators that had to be installed in each of the four legs.
Despite disagreements about specifications and the difficulty of doing business across the Atlantic at a time when sea borne mail was the fastest method of communication, the Otis elevators began service two months after the tower opened. Each used a cylinder in the ground that was raised by water pressure, activating a block and tackle that in turn raised a counterweighted car.
Meanwhile, a French company also had installed its version in the two other legs. Those elevators used an endless chain-link arrangement to raise and lower the cars. The system proved to be more complex, louder and slower than the Otis variant.
Power for all the elevators at this time came from steam systems; electricity did not replace them until about 1912. That was also the year that the Otis products ceased to serve the Eiffel Tower. One was replaced by a staircase to the first stage and the other by a small electric elevator that could function in the winter, when hydraulic systems were shut down.
For decades, Otis was not associated with the tower, but when the company did return, it was in a major way.
It happened in the early 1980s, by which time two key changes had occurred: The tower was in need of major renovation, including all of its elevators, and Otis was no longer viewed as a "foreign" company, having established significant operations in France and having absorbed the French elevator company whose lifts had served the tower since the beginning.
The new elevators included an inclined one from the ground to the first and second stages, and two Duo-lifts going from the second floor to the top. (Duo-lifts elevators are two cabs connected by the hoist ropes and suspended over a 219 gearless machine. As one cab goes up, the other goes down.)
The run covered 160 meters (524.9 feet), the longest open-air run anywhere. The elevators consisted of two cabins counter weighting one another, one going up and the other down. Two Duo-lifts were put into service, so 40 people could both ascend and descend simultaneously.
Then, in 2001, Otis fulfilled the contract to modernize the Duo-lifts, a process that had to be accomplished at night, during the few hours they were not in use. The job consumed 6,000 hours and involved the transport of eight tons of components to the top of the tower.
--------------- from www.otis.com |
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