I was going to hijack the Valentine's Day blog, however I'm figuring that someone else will cover that wonderful holiday. So I'll take Ferris Wheel Day. On February 14, 1859 one George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. was born. He lived a rather ordinary life until 1891. That's when the directors of the World's Columbian Exposition issued a challenge to American engineers to create monument to compete with the Eiffel Tower. It was for this challenge that George Ferris created the Ferris Wheel. The World's Columbian Exposition was held in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois. And the main feature was of course, the Ferris Wheel. The great wheel had a height of 264 feet, and fit 36 cars with 40 chairs holding 60 people per car. The capacity was a whopping 2,160 people.
I don't ever remember seeing a Ferris Wheel that large in my life, the biggest being the wheel at Elitch Gardens at just over a hundred feet high. Even the great wheel of 1893 was small when compared to today's giant wheels. The tallest Ferris Wheel in the world is in Singapore. The Singapore Flyer is 541 feet tall. No worries if you can't make it to Singapore anytime soon, the largest Ferris Wheel in the world will soon call Las Vegas home. Scheduled for completion in the spring of 2013, the wheel will be a nose-bleeding 550 feet tall. Time to plan that Vegas trip.
Roll on,
T
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