The death has occurred in Paris of M. Gustave Eiffel, designer of the tower which bears his name.
Eiffel was born at Dijon, and he was educated as an engineer. At the time when his career opened, metallic construction was beginning its modern development, and M. Eiffel studied it thoroughly. His first important work of this kind was the building of the railway bridge over the Garonne at Bordeaux in 1858, for which the piers were placed, by means of compressed air, at a depth of 80ft. below the river surface. Years later he devised improved methods in the construction of a bridge over the Douro at Oporto. He built several bridges in France and other countries, including Hungary, and also designed the railway station at Budapest. M. Eiffel was charged with the construction of locks in the first Panama Canal undertaking, which was interrupted by the financial crisis.
In 1886 M. Eiffel offered on his own responsibility to build the Eiffel Tower, and finished the work for the exhibition of 1889. After 20 years of private ownership the tower became the property of the City of Paris. It is now used as a wireless station, for which purpose its height of nearly 1,000ft. makes it admirably suitable. In all this purely engineering work M. Eiffel used new forms of pier construction for arches of great width. Among other works, the construction of the cupola of the Grand Equatorial at Nice is an interesting example of his methods. From 1900 until the war began M. Eiffel occupied himself with meteorological observation and research and for some years published an annual "Atlas Météorologique."".
In 1907 he published his "Recherchés experimentales sur la Résistance de l'air, executées à la Tour Eiffel."" When aeroplanes became practicable, he began to apply these researches for the benefit of the new art of flying. In 1910 he published a book describing his experiments, and this was translated into English and German.