George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., a bridge engineer, designed the landmark attraction for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, envisioning for it a similar role to what the Eiffel tower had been in Paris four years earlier. The new attraction was an iron wheel more than 80 metres high, dragging 36 tilting cabins around a complete turn in 20 minutes. Motion was transmitted directly to the rim — as it would happen with all large-radius wheels in history — and the rim was hanged to a central axle through metal spokes, like a bicycle wheel. Its success was immediate and enormous, leaving Ferris wheel as the common name for this attraction. Reassembled at Lincoln Park in Chicago, where the Lumière brothers happened to film it, the wheel was then shown at the World Fair in St Louis, before being demolished in 1906.
Photo: Congress Library via picryl.com