Influence
Gustave Eiffel's career was a result of Industrial Revolution. For a variety of economic and political reasons, this had been slow to make an impact in France, and Eiffel had the good fortune to be working at a time of rapid industrial development in France. Eiffel's importance as an engineer was twofold. Firstly he was ready to adopt innovative techniques first used by others, such as his use of compressed-air caissons and hollow cast-iron piers, and secondly he was a pioneer in his insistence on basing all engineering decisions on a base of thorough calculation of the forces involved, combining this analytical approach with an insistence on a high standard of accuracy in drawing and manufacture.
The growth of the railway network had an immense effect on people's lives, but although the enormous number of bridges and other work undertaken by Eiffel were an important part of this, the two works that did most to make him famous are the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, both projects of immense symbolic importance and today internationally recognized landmarks. The Tower is also important because of its role in establishing the aesthetic potential of structures whose appearance is largely dictated by practical considerations.
His contribution to the science of aerodynamics is probably of equal importance to his work as an engineer.
Read more about this topic: Gustave Eiffel
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am always glad to think that my education was, for the most part, informal, and had not the slightest reference to a future business career. It left me free and untrammeled to approach my business problems without the limiting influence of specific training.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)