PICTURESQUE WORLD’S FAIR. AN ELABORATE COLLECTION OF COLORED VIEWS
Page 85 – A VIEW THROUGH THE FERRIS WHEEL
A VIEW THROUGH THE FERRIS WHEEL.—Imposing as was the Ferris Wheel seen from a distance, a great object towering aloft and showing the location of the Fair from a distance of miles away, it was scarcely less impressive when its monster parts were examined from one of the cars which revolved with it, carrying their hosts of passengers. It was not any intricacy in the design of the wheel nor the complexity of its mechanism which most commanded admiration, for its construction involved no novel law of mechanics nor engineering, but rather the simplicity of all, the grand scale of construction and the admirable finish of every part. In the illustration a close view is afforded of the system of tension spokes—the spokes really in use being always stretched, those below the axle tautening the upper arc and making a perpetual bridge—as well as of the great axle, the largest piece of steel ever forged,. Two men and a boy, working under the big hammer of the Bethlehem Steel Works, made the great shaft, which was forty-five feet long, thirty-two inches in diameter and weighed seventy tons. It was made large enough and strong enough to bear six times the weight of the bridge across the Ohio River at Cincinnati. It rested and supported its burden at a height of one hundred and forty feet from the ground. As a specimen of daring engineering, well executed to a novel end, and of great work in iron and steel, the Ferris Wheel has never been surpassed.
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