Great wheel
The Great Wheel , officially called The Gigantic Wheel at the time, was a 91.4 meter high Ferris wheel in London . It was built on the model of the Chicago wheel between 1894 and 1895 and remained the largest in the world until the Paris Ferris wheel was completed . At the beginning of 1907 it was dismantled after almost twelve years of operation due to a lack of profitability. During its service life, the Ferris wheel, which was built for the Empire of India Exhibition in the Earls Court Exhibition Center near the Earl's Court train station of the same name , carried an estimated 2.5 million passengers. The company responsible for building the London Ferris Wheel was Maudslay, Sons and Field .
history
prehistory
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea received a large piece of land west of Earl's Court train station in the 19th century. The triangular land was bordered by railway lines and the train station. Another vacant piece of land in close proximity to the Lillie Bridge belonged to the district, but was needed for a coal store for the Midland Railway . The area was connected by bridges for several years and was used for larger exhibitions that repeatedly attracted crowds. The idea of making a permanent exhibition area out of it goes back to businessman John Robinson Whitley. In 1886 he established a Buffalo Bill Show in the USA , which he wanted to bring to London. The free land at Earl's Court seemed to him suitable, so that on October 1, 1886 he leased a 4.55 hectare site for 16 months. In the period that followed, several exhibitions took place with different countries as their thematic focus. The first began on May 9, 1887 and was called the American Exhibition and Wild West Show.
planning
After Whitley had already laid the foundation stone for the exhibition grounds, it was the impresario and organizer of Hungarian origin , Imre Kiralfy , who wanted to install a ferris wheel for the Empire of India Exhibition in 1895. Kiralfy's idea went back to the Big Wheel at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 , designed by George Washington Gale Ferris . The Gigantic Wheel and Recreation Towers Co., Limited was founded on February 8, 1894 with a starting capital of £ 60,000 to build and operate the London Ferris Wheel . The company's shares were issued at one pound each. At the beginning of the construction project, it was estimated that the construction of the Ferris wheel would cost £ 55,000.
The original plan was to set up four platforms on each side along the supports of the Ferris wheel and to accommodate restaurants and other attractions there. Passengers should be able to switch between the different platforms by getting on and off the gondolas. One full revolution would have taken about 35 minutes due to the continuous stops. Furthermore, it was considered to equip the gondolas differently and to divide the journey into a first and a second class, which should cost 2 and 1 schilling respectively . This idea was severely restricted in that only two platforms were placed exactly in the middle of the wheel.
construction
Construction began in March 1894. Although it was hoped that the Ferris wheel could be completed and used for the 1894 season, construction turned out to be more difficult than expected. Also in September only the supporting structure stood. It was alleged that the construction delays were caused by the wet weather and the coal strike in Scotland. The structural completion could finally take place in April 1895. After the gondolas were hung on the Ferris wheel, a small but unusual completion ceremony followed on April 27. The wife of the British naval officer and engineer Walter Basset, who acquired the patent of Ferris and built more along with London in Europe Ferris wheels and other women were hoisted to a height of 86 meters, to meet with the last two of the approximately 20,000 bolt the structure to complete. The women sat on chairs that were attached to cables, operated by a steam engine and maneuvered accordingly. The precarious project proceeded without incident.
After the start of operations had been postponed several times and the last expected opening was May 1895, the Ferris wheel was finally opened to the public on Saturday, July 6th, 1895 after a week of inspection. As early as Tuesday, July 2nd, members of the British royal family rode the Ferris wheel, including the then Princess of Wales Alexandra of Denmark and her two daughters Louise and Victoria . The next day, the operators and their friends were able to ride the Ferris wheel. The official name of the ferris wheel was The Gigantic Wheel . Ultimately, the cost of building the Ferris wheel was £ 62,500.
Operation and demolition
A technical incident occurred at 9 p.m. on May 21, 1896. Passengers got stuck in the Ferris wheel for four and a half hours due to damage to the drive cable. At that time, around 300 passengers were traveling in the Ferris wheel and around 60 to 70 had to wait around 15 hours in the upper part before they could be freed. The stuck guests were supplied with food and each passenger received £ 5 in reparation. A similar incident occurred again on July 24th.
The last exhibition before the demolition for which the Ferris wheel was used was the Imperial Austrian Exhibition in 1906.
The construction and operating company of the ferris wheel paid out a dividend of 29 cents just six months after it opened. The success was largely dependent on the number of visitors to the respective exhibition, which fluctuated considerably. It was considered necessary to reduce the capital value of the company, so that the company voluntarily went into liquidation on January 5, 1899 and renamed the London Gigantic Wheel Company Ltd. on January 14, 1899 . presented to investors with a capital stock reduced to £ 30,000. The shareholders received one 10 Schilling share for each 1 Pound share in the predecessor company. The lease for the site of the ferris wheel was designed for two years and then had to be renegotiated with the district administration. However, the company could not meet various conditions for the lease extension, so that it voluntarily liquidated again on January 1, 1907 and finally dissolved in 1909.
Towards the end of 1906, WT Andrews was given the dangerous and complex task of dismantling the Ferris wheel. Due to the proximity to the many railway lines, blasting was out of the question, so that the structure had to be laboriously dismantled and removed. First of all, the condition of the Ferris wheel was checked for possible damage on the basis of an overhaul. In the next step, the gondolas were removed in such a way that there was no severe mass imbalance. Then the circular structure was removed from top to bottom. From the beginning of 1907 it took around four months to dismantle the entire structure. 200 permanent workers were involved in the work, who received the support of another 200 auxiliary workers during peak phases.
description
location
The Ferris wheel stood on the northern edge of the Earls Court Exhibition Center in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. Starting from the central Imperial Court , the Indian City continued to the north and the Ferris wheel was accessible via a short avenue called Elysia. To the east of the Ferris wheel there were smaller galleries and exhibition buildings. Immediately west of the Ferris wheel was a line of the Midland Railway. From the Ferris wheel one could get over two bridges westwards over the railway line of the Midland Railway into the Western Gardens. To the northeast of the Ferris wheel was the machine house necessary for its operation .
At the moment, nothing reminds of the Ferris wheel at the former location. Now houses the on the site depot Lillie Bridge depot , lead to the sidings of the railway line. However, the foundations that were never recovered are still underground.
architecture
Compared to its 84-meter-high model from Chicago, the Ferris wheel in London was higher and also had a different support structure. The 91.4 meter high Ferris wheel was supported by eight 45.7 meter high columns, which were built by the company Sir William Arrol & Company from Glasgow . The supporting structure alone, including the platforms, weighed 400 tons and was based on massive, pyramid-shaped concrete blocks that gave the structure the necessary stability up to a depth of 4.5 meters. Each of these foundation concrete blocks weighed around 250 tons. The total mass of the ferris wheel was 1,100 tons. The executing civil engineers were the two Australians Adam Gaddelin and Gareth Watson.
A remarkable unique selling point of the London Ferris wheel was its roofed balcony-like platforms, which were attached on both sides at the height of the wheel center and which could be reached by elevators . The two striking platforms above the supporting structure had a rectangular floor plan, carried a pyramid roof and had two flagpoles on the outside . They were called the promenade and were intended to serve as a viewing platform for visitors to the Ferris wheel and as a restaurant. At the time of the opening, however, these platforms and the elevators were not yet completed. The extensive exhibition catalog does not mention these rooms any further and there is also no recording or advertising on which ascending or descending elevators can be made out or this particular room usage offer is discussed. Presumably, these rooms were never finally completed and therefore never used during the entire operating period.
The wheel axle had a diameter of 2.1 meters and a weight of 58 tons. The axle was manufactured by Maudslay, Sons and Field, which was also responsible for the construction. The wheel carried a total of 40 gondolas, each of which weighed 5.25 tons, was 3.0 meters high and had a rectangular base area of 2.7 × 7.3 meters. The capacity of the gondolas was designed for up to 40 people. The gondolas were built by the wagon builder Brown, Marshalls and Co. Ltd. made near Birmingham . A full turn took around 20 minutes. Windsor Castle is said to have been seen on a clear day . A technical highlight at that time was that not only the gondolas were equipped with electric light in the evening, but that the entire Ferris wheel was illuminated in order to put it in the limelight.
Drive technology
As much as the London Ferris wheel was based on its counterpart from Chicago, the mechanical drive technology was just as different. While the Chicago Ferris wheel drove the axis of rotation, the engineer Walter Bassett Basset chose a different approach. Basset's construction was based on a drive system made up of chains that ran underground from the machine house to the ferris wheel. The two chains, each around 305 meters long and weighing eight tons, were guided via a system of rollers and V-shaped grooves to the outer ring of the Ferris wheel, where they provided the drive. The chains themselves were operated by two 50 HP steam engines from Robey & Co. Both the approach and the stop of the Ferris wheel were smooth, without impacts and static loads on the construction. This mechanism could be operated by a single person.
Commemorative medals
Over the entire service life of the Ferris wheel from London were a year commemorative medals from bronze embossed. The round medal measures 32 millimeters in diameter and 1.8 in thickness and weighs 11.66 grams. Even if it is about the size of an old penny coin, it is and was not a means of payment . On one side it bears the image of the Ferris wheel with the respective year of issue on the lower edge and the circumferential inscription Gigantic Wheel Earls Court . On the back of the souvenir allotment was a short explanatory text with technical data and a note that Windsor Castle could be seen from the Ferris wheel. The medals received are still traded as collector's items today.
Classification to other ferris wheels
George Ferris, the inventor of the Ferris wheel, implemented the first such amusement ride at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. The success of this invention prompted the British naval officer and engineer Walter Bassett Basset to buy Ferris' patent and subsequently to build four more Ferris wheels in Europe. The only one of these four first Ferris wheels from the turn of the century that is still standing is the Vienna Ferris Wheel in the Prater , which is a structurally smaller copy of the Blackpool Ferris wheel. A Ferris wheel planned for the New Brighton district, as part of Wallasey , was not built due to legal disputes between Basset and Graydon. The place built the New Brighton Tower to replace it , but it was demolished again in the 1920s.
| Chicago | London | Blackpool | Vienna | Paris | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| image |
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|
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.jpg)
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| Maximum height | 84 m | 91.4 m | 67 m | 64.7 m | 100 m |
| Year of construction | 1893 | 1895 | 1896 | 1897 | 1900 |
| Year of dismantling | 1906 | 1906 | 1928 | in operation | 1920 |
In 1998–2000, London received another Ferris wheel, the London Eye , which is one of the largest in the world with a height of 135 meters .
literature
- The Gigantic Wheel. In: The Ingineer of April 20, 1894, p. 324. ( digitized version )
- Empire of India Exhibition (Ed.): Official catalog of the Empire of India exhibition, Earl's Court, London, SW, 1895. London 1895, p. 14. ( digitized version )
- Big wheels. In: Discoveries and inventions of the nineteenth century. Robert Routledge, New York 1901, ISBN 978-1-138-39006-5 .
- Norman Anderson: Ferris Wheels. An Illustrated History. Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1992, ISBN 0-87972-531-1 , pp. 75, pp. 94-103.
Web links
- Dave Walker: Gigantic: the Earl's Court Wheel - blog post
- londonist.com: When Earl's Court Had Its Own London Eye (Engl.)
- Grace's Guide to British Industrial History: Gigantic Wheel and Recreation Towers Co (Engl.)
- The District's Exhibition Grounds at Earls Court (Engl.)
- National Geographic : The Story of Sky Wheels (English) - Documentation as a video contribution
- A rare souvenir of London's Great Wheel - blog post on a historic postcard of the London Ferris wheel
Remarks
- ↑ According to other sources, the height is given as 308 feet = 93.9 meters, for example in: Nicholas Freeman: 1895. Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain. Edinburg 2011, Edinburg University Press, ISBN 978-0-7486-4056-0 , p. 153. ( digitized version )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Evening Standard : Spot the difference: London landmarks, then and now , December 3, 2012 article, accessed August 21, 2019
- ↑ skyscrapernews.com: The Great Wheel , accessed August 21, 2019
- ↑ Maudslay, Sons and Field by J. Foster Petree , accessed August 21, 2019
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n The District's Exhibition Grounds at Earls Court (Engl.)
- ↑ a b c Big Wheels in: Discoveries and inventions of the nineteenth century.
- ^ Empire of India Exhibition (ed.): Official catalog of the Empire of India exhibition: Earl's Court, London, SW, 1895 , location map.
- ^ The Frist London Eye in: Simon Leyland: A Curious Guide To London. Bantam Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-593-07323-0 .
- ^ Empire of India Exhibition (Ed.): Official catalog of the Empire of India exhibition: Earl's Court, London, SW, 1895 , p. 14.
- ↑ dyingcharlotte.com: The Wheel in the Sky , blog post from July 12, 2017, accessed on August 22, 2019
- ↑ Gigantic Wheel Token , accessed August 23, 2019
- ^ Token Great Britain Gigantic Wheel at Earls Court 1895 to 1906 , accessed August 23, 2019
- ↑ Anderson: Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History. Pp. 94-95.
- ↑ Anderson: Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History. P. 95.
- ↑ Anderson: Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History. P. 113.
Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 27 ″ N , 0 ° 12 ′ 9 ″ W.