George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.
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George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. (February 14, 1859 – November 22, 1896) was an American civil engineer. He is mostly known for creating the original Ferris Wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition.<ref name=obit/>
Early life
Ferris was born on February 14, 1859, in Galesburg, Illinois, the town founded by his namesake, George Washington Gale. His parents were George Washington Gale Ferris Sr. and Martha Edgerton Hyde.<ref>Template:Cite census</ref> He had an older brother named Frederick Hyde, born in 1843.<ref>Template:Cite census</ref> In 1864 when Ferris was five years old, his family sold their dairy farm and moved to Nevada. For two years, they lived in Carson Valley.
Template:AnchorFrom 1868 to 1890, his father, George Washington Gale Ferris Sr., owned the Sears–Ferris House at 311 W. Third, Carson City, Nevada. Originally built in about 1863 by Gregory A. Sears, a pioneer Carson City businessman,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places for Carson City on February 9, 1979.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Ferris Senior was an agriculturalist/horticulturalist, noteworthy in Carson City's development for much of the city's landscaping during the 1870s, and for importing a large number of the trees from the east that were planted throughout the city.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Ferris left Nevada in 1875 to attend the California Military Academy in Oakland, where he graduated in 1876. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, in the class of 1881 with a degree in Civil Engineering. At RPI he was a charter member of the local chapter of the Chi Phi student fraternity.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and a member of the Rensselaer Society of Engineers. He was made a member of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Alumni Hall of Fame in 1998.<ref name=Rensselaer>Template:Cite web</ref>
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Ferris began his career in the railroad industry and was interested in bridge building.<ref name=Rensselaer/> He founded a company, G.W.G. Ferris & Co. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to test and inspect metals for railroads and bridge builders.Template:Citation needed
Ferris House, his home at 1318 Arch Street, Central Northside, was added to the list of City of Pittsburgh Designated Historic Structures on June 28, 2001.<ref name="CPHS">Template:Cite web</ref>
Ferris wheel
Template:Main News of the World's Columbian Exposition to be held in 1893, in Chicago, Illinois, drew Ferris to the city. In 1891, the Exposition's directors issued a challenge to American engineers to conceive of a monument for the fair to surpass the Eiffel Tower, the great structure of the Paris International Exposition of 1889.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The planners wanted something "original, daring and unique". Ferris proposed a wheel from which visitors could view the entire exhibition, a wheel that would "out-Eiffel Eiffel".<ref>Larson, Eric. The Devil In the White City. 1st ed. New York: Vintage, 2004. Template:ISBN?Template:Page needed</ref>
Ferris returned in a few weeks with several respectable endorsements from established engineers, and the committee agreed to allow construction to begin. Most convincingly, he had recruited several local investors to cover the $400,000 cost of construction.
The Ferris Wheel had 36 cars, each fitted with 40 revolving chairs and able to accommodate up to 60 people, giving a total capacity of 2,160.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> When the fair opened, it carried some 38,000 passengers daily, taking 20 minutes to complete two revolutions—the first involving six stops to allow passengers to enter and exit, and the second a nine-minute non-stop rotation, for which the ticket holder paid 50 cents. It carried 2.5 million passengers before it was finally demolished in 1906.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
After the fair closed, Ferris claimed that the exhibition management had robbed him and his investors of their portion of the nearly $750,000 profit that his wheel brought in. He spent the next two years in litigation.<ref name="MIT">Template:Cite web</ref>
Death
Ferris Sr. died in 1895, followed soon after by Ferris Jr. himself, on November 22, 1896, at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of typhoid fever.<ref name=obit>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> His ashes remained at a Pittsburgh crematorium for over a year, waiting for someone to take possession of them.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
See also
References
Further reading
- Weingardt, Richard G. Circles in the Sky: The Life and Times of George Ferris. Reston, Va.: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009.
- Larson, Erik Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. Crown Publishers, 2003
External links
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Historical Inventors – George Ferris – The Ferris Wheel
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Alumni Hall of Fame – George W.G. Ferris
Template:Ferris wheel Template:Amusement rides Template:Authority control
- Pages with broken file links
- 1859 births
- 1896 deaths
- 19th-century American engineers
- 19th-century American inventors
- American civil engineers
- Amusement ride manufacturers
- Ferris wheels
- Deaths from typhoid fever in the United States
- Infectious disease deaths in Pennsylvania
- People from Galesburg, Illinois
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni
- Nevada State Register of Historic Places
- World's Columbian Exposition
- Engineers from Illinois
- Inventors from Illinois