How the Eiffel Tower grew six metres this year
The Eiffel Tower has grown a whopping six metres in just one day, after a new communications antenna was attached to the top by a team of engineers.
The digital radio antenna was taken to the top of the Iron Lady by helicopter and fixed on, taking the looming structure from 324 metres to 330 metres tall, as reported by the NZ Herald.
Though it may seem like a minor event to tourists, Jean-François Martins, the Eiffel Tower company’s president, said it was a historic moment in the tower’s 133-year history.
“It’s a historical moment this morning because the Eiffel Tower is getting higher, which is not so common,” Mr Martins told the Associated Press.
“From the invention of the radio at the beginning of the 20th century to right now, decades after decades, the Eiffel Tower has been a partner for all the radio technology.”
But when the Eiffel Tower was first inaugurated in 1889 - when it was just 312 metres high - it wasn’t a hub for tourists or meant to be a permanent attraction.
Originally built as a main attraction at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair, the structure caused controversy in the art world and was meant to be taken down after 20 years.
As Parisians began to welcome its bold design, its creator, Gustave Eiffel, saved it from deconstruction by making it an enormous antenna for wireless broadcasting.
According to the Eiffel Tower’s website, the structure’s creator intended for it to be a hub for science, with barometers, anemometers, lightning conductors and even a meteorology office added to it on the day it was inaugurated.
Now, it also broadcasts 45 TV channels and 32 radio stations across the region, thanks to its various emitters and installations.
Visitors can also see the names of 72 French scientists engraved on the tower, including the chemist Henry Louis Le Chatelier (the namesake of a principle of thermodynamics) and Léon Foucault (who was credited with naming the gyroscope and demonstrating how the Earth rotates).
Image: @toureiffelofficielle (Instagram)