The engineering problem statement of the Eiffel tower was to build a suitable monument for the Paris World’s fair which would commemorate the French revolution. The design that Eiffel proposed to the World’s Fair Committee was a 300 meter high open-lattice wrought iron, namely puddled iron, tower (Barthes, 2012). However this was not seen as an easy task as it would have been the highest man-made structure this earth would have seen. Factors such as the stability of the …show more content…
The tower required approximately 7000 tons of puddled iron to be completed although the final weight of the tower is 10 100 tons (Gallant, 2002). Another resource used to a great extent was wood. Wood was required to build scaffolding for the workers who constructed the first floor. The wood required was to build twelve 30 meter high scaffoldings and four 45 meter scaffoldings (Gallant, 2002). Although iron and wood can be seen as the two largest natural resources used there were many others also used like the coal for the steam cranes, cement and bricks for the foundation. The people who worked on the Eiffel tower can be considered as one of the biggest resources during the build of the Eiffel tower. It took 50 people to accurately calculate and draw up the designs for each of the 18 000 steel members to be used and roughly 300 steel workers to constructed the tower during the 26 months (Barthes, 2012). There were also another 150 workers at the factory in Levallois-Perret to manufacture the iron components during the build of the tower. (Barthes,