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The Eiffel Tower was meant to be torn down. Radio saved it.

The Eiffel Tower was supposed to come down in 1909. Radio saved it.

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The real story

The tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair, marking 100 years since the French Revolution. Two years earlier, a group of famous artists and writers, including Guy de Maupassant and Charles Gounod, published a protest in a Paris newspaper calling it useless and monstrous. Gustave Eiffel's company was given the right to run it for 20 years, and after that it could be taken down.

Eiffel knew he had to make it useful, so he backed scientific experiments from the top. In 1898 a radio link was made from the tower to the Panthéon, and from 1903 the army used it for long-range radiotelegraphy. In 1910 its concession was renewed, and during the First World War its radio station listened in on enemy messages. Today it still carries broadcast antennas.

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The facts we checked

  • The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair in Paris
  • Leading artists signed a public letter calling it useless and monstrous; it had a permit for only 20 years
  • It was saved by its use as a radio and telegraph antenna; in summer heat the iron expands and it grows by up to about 15 cm

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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