February 4, 2019 • 26 mins
Gustave Eiffel’s expertise in iron work was sought for projects throughout Europe and South America, and he worked on one of the most iconic structures in the U.S. His career is mostly an impressive series of successes, save one colossal scandal.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy be Wilson, and I
apologize upfront because any listeners are going to be hearing
about this for the next couple of months. We're going
(00:23):
to Paris. It's true. Uh, if you want to get
in on that trip, because listeners can come with us, Uh,
you just go to our website. There is an option
in the menu bar at the top of the page
that says Paris trip exclamation point because of excitement, and
then that will give you all the details on booking.
Because we are going on this Paris trip in June,
and I have a little bit of the rabies about
(00:45):
France topics. So, uh, you're getting a two parter on
a French topic this week because I'm very excited and
it is the thing we will visit, at least I
will visit for sure when we are there. Literally only
everyone everyone has heard of what we call in the
US the Eiffel Tower actually fell, But that's a whole
(01:06):
other thing. Uh. That one structure itself and its construction
could easily be the subject of multiple episodes because there's
a whole fascinating story, particularly from the engineering and building standpoint.
Uh there, But the engineer it is named for, Gustava Fell,
contributed a great deal more to the world than that
one iconic structure. So we will talk about the building
(01:28):
of the turf l but we won't cover it in
complete exhaustive detail. And Gustava Fell's early life actually showed
no indication that he was going to end up famous
for his engineering work, and his later life actually went
in a totally different direction, and his expertise in iron
work was sought for projects throughout Europe and South America.
(01:50):
He also worked on one of the most iconic structures
in the United States as well, And his career is
interesting to me because it's mostly an impressive series of
successes except for one colossal scandal. Like I feel like
often when we talk about somebody who has become iconic historically,
it's like we're revealing all of the struggle and all
of the mistakes they made along the way. And in
(02:13):
this case, it's kind of like, yeah, he did that,
and it was on time and under budget, and also
that other one was on time and under budget, and
also this one was on time and under budget because
he was very exacting. So this is a little bit different,
uh than the I messed up a lot and then
I made a great thing. It's more like I made
a lot of great stuff. People just only remember one.
I was very competent. Yes, I was extraordinarily good at
(02:35):
what I did. Uh. And we will talk about some
criticisms of him as well. But in the first part
of this two parter, we're going to talk about his
early family life and how he eventually found himself working
with what we're very modern materials for the time. He
kind of stumbled into it. Uh. And then in the
second part, which will be the next episode, we will
delve into some of his most famous projects, as well
(02:56):
as the surprising turn that his efforts took in his
eight years. Alexandra Gustave I Fell was born December fifteenth,
eighteen thirty two. His family was originally from Germany. His
great great grandfather had moved to Paris in the early
seventeen hundreds, and the family trade was tapestry weaving up
until Alexandra Bunkauzenfel, who was Gustav's father, went into military
(03:20):
service instead of becoming a weaver. The elder Alexandra married
Gustave's mother, Katherine Melanie Munus, in the fall of eighteen
twenty four while he was stationed in Dijon that's roughly
two hundred miles southeast of Paris. Gustav had two sisters
born after him. There were Marie, who was born in
eighteen thirty four and Lure born in eighteen thirty six.
(03:41):
And Catherine was not a woman who married and had
kids and then stayed home to raise them. She was
a little unique for her time. She was actually an
entrepreneur with a very astute business instinct, and not long
after she became a mother, she decided that she would
take her family's business, which was charcoal, and expanded. She
arraigned for her company to become the distributor of coal
(04:02):
from more minds throughout France than they already had, in
order to capitalize on the growing need for coal in industry.
So both parents had very busy careers, but the family
was very close. Gustave and his mother especially were close.
But Catherine and Alexandra also prioritize their children, all of
their children and offered them an example of a dedicated
(04:23):
work ethic and a marriage of equals. When Catherine's coal
business started to grow really quickly, Alexandra left his civil
administrator job to go work with her, and together they
built a pretty nice fortune for the family. Eventually they
moved into a brewery business and they kept doing well there,
But they were also seen as outsiders in high society.
(04:44):
I was really dominated by old money families who had
been wealthy for generations, so their new money just didn't
have the same shine to it. Yeah, they did not
have clout in high society circles. And they were actually
running that brewery. They had just made a big investment
in it after they sold their their coal company. I
should also mention that you'll often see that Gustav and
(05:05):
his sisters were raised largely by their grandmother on his
mother's side, which she They did stay with her the
majority of the time, but both Catherine and Alexander made
a point to always go home and spend time with
their children and be with them as much as they
could be. Gaustav also became close with his chemist uncle
Jean Baptiste Mora, who ran a large distillery, and Molarat's
friend Michel Pray, also an industrial chemist who made a
(05:28):
name for himself in mineral mining, and these two men
were pretty highly influential in the development of the Fails worldview.
Both believed basically in questioning everything. His uncle was particularly
anti royalist, and both thought that you should question things,
both philosophically and scientifically. Gustav found school to be really challenging.
(05:51):
It was boring at best and excruciating at worst, but
two of his teachers really ignited a love of learning
for him when he got to be a teenager. He
had a literature teacher named Monsieur Clements and a history
teacher named Monsieur de Jardines, and their entry into his
education really inspired him to continue it. They helped him
(06:11):
get caught up on his work, which he had follen
behind on by meaning I saw one estimate that he
was like a year behind his peers because he had
just stopped bothering. Yeah. They also helped him gain admission
and to the College Santa barb in Paris, which they
hope would lead him to getting entry into a cold
polytechnique to finish up his education. And the youngfl had
(06:34):
traveled to Paris from Dijon for the first time when
he was twelve and During that trip, which he took
with his mother, he really fell in love with the city.
But even though he had seemed entirely excited as a
slightly older young man to attend school there, he pretty
quickly became homesick. After he started at college, stab he
eventually found amusements in seeking out opportunities, for example, to
(06:57):
dance with young ladies. He made a note that he
preferred nancing with English girls rather than French girls because
he found them less reserved, and he also would attend
the occasional seance. So he wasn't really focusing on his studies. Uh,
he didn't get really passionate about his education. He kind
of sat right in the middle of his class achievement wise.
After his second year, his performance on his exams hadn't
(07:18):
been good enough to get him entry into a coal polytechnique,
so instead he went to a close said trial. He
didn't seem very dismayed by this change of plans, and
the need to go to a less prestigious school didn't
seem to phase him all that much. He wasn't focused
on engineering or metallurgy in his studies. Those are things
that you might expect of the man who would become
known for building these massive iron structures. When it came
(07:41):
time to select a concentration, he went into chemistry, probably
thinking he might eventually take over his uncle's business, although
due to a politically generated falling out in the family
that never really happened. No. As I said, his uncle
was very outspoken and like to question everything, and that
cost him problem with other members of the family. Gustav
(08:03):
graduated from a concentral in eighteen fifty five, and while
he had focused on chemistry and actually had really done
pretty well in those studies, for a change, he also
had a pretty well rounded education. Eighteen fifty five was
also the year that f l asked his mother for
a season past the Exhibition Universal in Paris. London's Great
(08:23):
Exhibition of eighteen fifty one, which has come up on
this podcast a number of times before, including Joseph Paxton's
Crystal Palace, had been a massive success, and the French
were eager to outdo it, in part because they felt
that they had invented the idea of having these sort
of world's fairs, and that the British had stolen the
concept from them and then acted as though it was
their own. But in any case, Paris in eighteen fifty
(08:46):
five was alive with this desire to show off the
best and the brightest in the newly constructed Palais de
Landes three on the Chancels. In fact, the Exposition Universal
had really carved out a different space from the London
Expo in terms of national identity and areas of expertise.
So as the animosity waned and Britain and France started
(09:08):
building a more cordial relationship, which was cemented by Queen
Victoria's visit to the Prisian Expo, the French started focusing
more on showcasing their taste for design and art instead
of making a real run at trying to shame Britain's
more industrial and manufacturing focused show that had happened four
years prior. And Gustave Fel was on hand to see
(09:28):
and explore all of this. And while that experience must
have been enthralling and very exciting, young Gustav eventually had
to figure out a career path, and we will get
to that right after we first pause for a little
sponsor break. Since the plan to take over his uncle's
(09:50):
distillery was no longer in place by the time he
graduated from school, fl took a foundry apprenticeship with his
brother in law, Joseph Colin, and this was not a
paying position. So while i Fel used the opportunity to
learn as much as he could about iron founding, he
also started looking for a permanent job with an income immediately.
The next year, eighteen fifty six, it Fell visited the
(10:13):
offices and workshop of Charles Nipvou in the eighth Arrondissement
as one of a series of visits that he made
to inquire after work. This was a pretty fortuitous visit
because Nippoo was already at the forefront of the railway industry.
He designed both tracks and engines, and he offered Gustavo
Felt a job. I Fell would work as the private
(10:36):
secretary and would get an on the job education and
engineering and material science while he was at it. At
the same time, it Fell took economics classes through a
Sunday program at Ecode. Means, yeah, the ecodeman was basically
letting him have a private tutorship and getting full course
credit for it so that he could continue his work.
(10:56):
And it is kind of funny to me, this is
sort of that cases somebody just stumbling into what ends
up being the thing that defines them, because he was
visiting a lot of different offices and places along the
way when he happened to meet with Neva and just
kind of struck his moment. But this all seems ideal,
but Nava was in some serious financial trouble after a
(11:18):
really expensive project that he had been working on had
gone completely awry, and one day Neva just didn't show
up at the office and for two weeks he was
missing and the businesses bills and management went completely unattended.
NFL was actually afraid that his new boss had killed himself.
There were some clues that have fell had put together
and really feared for this man's life, but in reality
(11:40):
he seems to have had a nervous breakdown, and after
he returned to work, Gustav actually stayed with Neva to
help him close up the business, even though he knew
he was not going to get paid for these efforts because,
as we said, deep financial trouble. But Nava did find
a Fl a new job at a company de Chemin
de Faire de Luest that's the Western Railway Company, and
(12:01):
this was not the end of his relationship though with Nibva.
Gustav earned a hundred and twenty five francs a month
in his new position and worked with the chief engineer
as the company kept expanding its considerable railway holdings. That
chief engineer was Eugene flesh At, who was an innovator
in the use of sheet metal iron work. At this point,
iron as an architectural material was still pretty new in France,
(12:25):
and Fleshat had been a significant contributor in the slow
acceptance in France. England was a bit ahead of France
and incorporating iron into construction and had been experimenting with
it all the way back in the seventeen hundreds. Yet
some of that was economic, like it was just expensive
to start experimenting with this new material and France did
not have the money or interest in spending the money
(12:47):
to do that. And also some of it was aesthetic.
They weren't really ready to adopt this new thing yet.
That will come up in Part two as well. But
with the railway, fl designed his first structure. It was
a bridge seventy two eat uh that's just short of
twenty two that would be constructed with cast iron and
sheet iron, and this design was approved for construction for
(13:08):
the Saint Germain railway. At the same time, Nippo was
working to sell off his company, which he had never
really been good at running. He wanted to sell it
to a larger firm that would pay him to continue
to do engineering and design work without having to worry
about all the administrative tasks that he just couldn't get
a handle on trying to run his own business. He
(13:29):
sold to a Belgian company and not only got the
position he wanted, but also arranged for Gestava Fel to
be given a senior position in the French office as
head of research, which paid two in fifty francs a month. Yeah,
that was a big jump for him. That doubled his income.
He went from being like an entry level employee to
a senior employee at a different company. It was a
(13:49):
nice way of saying thank you for sticking with me
in that whole messy business. A while back, uh And
with the new Belgian company, Nevo secured a high profile project.
This is a bridge over the guard on the river
at Bordeaux that would link to previously separated rail systems
and Charles nabva entrusted a fell with the metal assembly.
He ran the entire side of that operation, and this
(14:11):
was no small ask because the project was huge and
it had only a twenty four month window for completion.
The project didn't just involve the iron bridge. Before the
construction could even start, it Fell had to set up
workshops and a temporary service bridge at the site so
that the iron work could be assembled there before it
was installed. But it Fell managed all of this and
(14:34):
the bridge work itself very efficiently. He used hydraulic pile driving,
which is a really new technique, to drive hollow caissons
into the riverbed that could serve as workspaces during construction.
And as a side note, Casson disease decompression sickness, characterized
by the formation of gas bubbles in the body when
a person moves quickly from a high pressure environment to
(14:56):
a lower pressure environment, is in fact named for this
con ruction technique, because these cassans would be pressurized so
that people could work in them underwater and then they
would go back to regular top side without really any
transition time. Uh. But there is no record of any
such illness happening on a Fell's Bordeaux Bridge project. The
(15:17):
only injury on record took place when a riveter fell
into the river during construction, and Gustavo Fell jumped into
the water to rescue the worker, and then he instituted
a series of new safety measures immediately after the whole
thing was done, including uh, the men always had to
be tethered with a rope if they were riveting up
(15:37):
on the bridge. And it should be noted though, that
the laborer who fell was actually believed to have been
intoxicated at the time of the accident. So while of
course they needed all these safety measures, he was not
being safe on the job to begin with. Part of
the reason that it Fell was so efficient was that
he was very precise and his design and calculations. While
(15:57):
other engineers were developing designs through trial and error, he
was doing really meticulous math before the project started to
make sure that his ideas were structurally sound. This bridge
was a success, and it led to it Fell's promotion
in eighteen sixty to Engineer General. He was given a
salary of nine thousand francs a year, plus a five
percent share of the profits on any of his projects.
(16:19):
He could also not be dismissed with less than a
year's notice. Yeah, that's a sweet deal and at this point,
Gustava Fel was successful, he was stable, and he was
in his late twenties, and what he really really wanted
was a family of his own. And he had dated
a number of women, and he even tried to become
engaged to one of the young ladies that he had dated,
(16:40):
but her family did not think he was of high
enough social standing. That's kind of his what we talked
about a moment ago with his parents being very successful
but never quite being accepted by the wealthier high society
kind of coming back to bite him. But he reunited
with a young woman from his hometown of Dijon that
he had known since childhood, and there he finally found
(17:00):
his match. Stav married Marie Goudlay on July eighteen sixty two. Marie,
who went by Marguerite, was the granddaughter of one of
the fl family business partners, so blending the two families
is a pretty natural fit. The two of them went
on to have five children. The first was a daughter
named Claire, who was born in eighteen sixty three, which
(17:21):
was the year after their wedding. Yes, she uh one
thing that I read suggested that she had just started
going by Marguerite to make things easier since his mother
was a marie and so they would be easy to
to differentiate when people were speaking about them. And this
marriage was a happy one, but unfortunately a series of
problems unfolded NFL's life soon after the wedding. While he
(17:44):
had been promoted again by the company, it quickly became
a parent that there were some serious problems with finances
and the business was not stable anymore, and he knew
he had to get out, and so after putting together
a few independent projects and some consulting tracks, he decided
he would just set out on his own and go
into business for himself. At the same time, he and
(18:05):
his new bride took on the full time care of
Gustav's sister, Lore, who had some serious health problems. She
died in the summer of eighteen sixty four, and Gustav,
who really doated on both of his sisters, grieved very deeply.
So he was in the midst of personal and professional
upheaval as he and Marguerite were starting their family. Fortunately,
(18:26):
that move, though, to work for himself, proved to be
a really good one. In the spring of the following year,
a Fel traveled to Egypt, as part of a lucrative
government contract he had gotten in which he was managing
the manufacturer of a large order of locomotives like several
dozen engines. While touring northern Africa, he visited the Suez
Canal construction site and he made the acquaintance of Ferdinand
(18:48):
de la Sepps, whose company was building it delas EPs,
and Gustav's business relationship with him would later be the
cause of a great deal of trouble for a fl
but that is going to come up in the second
part of its episode. When the French government decided to
host another expo in eighteen sixty seven, Gustav Fell hoped
to be involved in construction of the main hall, but
(19:10):
while he had been working on a lot of projects,
he didn't have a workshop of his own, so there
wasn't any way that he could capture a big contract
for this exhibition. Instead, he served as an assistant to
Jean Baptiste Kruntz, who was the director of works and designed,
among other things, the arch girders for one of the galleries,
which established the mathematical design rules of all wrought iron
(19:32):
construction going forward. Yeah, he was working really constantly on
a lot of projects, and as we had said, he
was very, very careful and meticulous with his math, and
he really set down a lot of the rules that
builders used going forward from that point. And while his
work on the exhibition was productive, even before the show opened,
gustav had begun looking for a place to set up
(19:54):
his own iron work so that he would not lose
out on future opportunities. In late eighteen sixty six, he
had secured a location in northern Paris to do just that,
and he began advertising his availability to design and build
projects from boilers to reservoirs. We will talk about his
early days offering full engineering and construction services and just
(20:14):
a moment, but we're going to pause before we do
and have a sponsor break. It was not an easy
run for Gustavo Fell getting his business off the ground.
While he did get a fair amount of work, it
was all relatively small contracts. He built things like small
(20:35):
bridges and gas works and even the iron framework for
a synagogue, but large scale projects were at least initially
few and far between. In October sixty eight, Gustava Fell
started a partnership with another ico, Central Alum, to form
the firm Gustavo fell a company. His partner too feel
Sawig was the junior partner, although he fronted a lot
(20:58):
more money than it failed it. Their initial contract was
for five years and was renewed when it expired. Nfl
continued to work really steadily throughout the end of the
eighteen sixties and basically established himself as the authority on
iron bridge and railway construction. And during this time he
developed many of the standards in both design and construction
(21:19):
processes that remained in place for decades. But he really
wanted to move beyond primarily building bridges and start working
on buildings. But as he looked into expanding his skills
into grander efforts, his actual work became more scarce. As
the eighteen sixties near their end, there was unrest in
France as Napoleon the Third was facing growing resentment after
(21:43):
making a number of bad moves that left France without
many allies in the period leading up to the Franco
Prussian War. Yeah, that's the very, very very quick and
dirty version of for a fl. He was more concerned
with his business and its health than he really seemed
to be with politics. But he became a sergeant in
the National Guard, and he sent Marguerite and their children
(22:05):
away from Paris when things got a little bit dicey
during the uprising, But mostly he was just really irritated
that he couldn't get to his work because parts of
the city were closed off. While this trouble in France
was playing out, it Fell sought out work outside of
the country to try to keep his business afloat. He
sent one of his associates to South America to work
on deals there, and continued to drum up projects in
(22:27):
Europe and Northern Africa. The South American efforts were very successful,
and it Fells firm was soon building railways and churches
and government buildings. Working abroad when his firm was responsible
for the entire projects start to finish, rather than serving
as a consultant, came with its own challenges. So, for example,
what would happen if something was wrong with the assembly
(22:47):
once they got it on site. It was not feasible
to expect a job to halt in Peru, for example,
so that a part could be cast in France and
then shipped over the Atlantic. So for those South American contracts,
Gustava Fell would first build the structure at his iron
works in Le Pere in the northwest section of Paris
to make sure they were perfect, and then those structures
(23:10):
would be taken apart and shipped in pieces to their
final destination, where those pieces were reassembled. But in eighteen
seventy three, this lucrative avenue of his business ended when
his Latin American business manager, Monsieur li Liever died. He
had been the one man that fel had really trusted
the handle contracts overseas, and without him, he knew it
(23:31):
was just not going to work. Yeah, he felt like
he could not possibly train someone up to be able
to do the things that Lillievre was doing, and also
he could not build up the level of trust that
he had had with that man. So he thought it
was better to just shutter that part of his business.
And this is kind of a downer place to leave things,
but we are going to end part one here so
(23:51):
that we can keep some of his most famous efforts
together in part two. And I also just kind of
wanted to do it as like a juxtaposition, because once
he it's into this second part of his life, it's
all really like success, success, success, Whereas I wanted to
kind of keep this one separate because it's it's a
little bit of foundering and figuring things out that he
was doing as a young man, and I like that. Yeah,
(24:15):
that good old Gustav Fel. Uh. Do you have some
listener mail for us? I do? I do? I do.
One is from our listener Tracy, who writes, Dear Tracy
and Holley, I'm a longtime listener who shares your love
of postcards, so I thought I would send you one
from Maui. So I'm just gonna be honest right now.
I read this because I'm selfish and I love Hawaii,
and it made me think of tropical things when it's
(24:36):
very cold outs. But Tracy goes on to say I
adore your show. I learned so much and appreciate how
accessible you make complicated historical stories. She also apparently likes
the way I laugh, which I appreciate not everyone does. Uh.
Thank you so much, Tracy, this is beautiful and it
makes me want to go to Hawaii as soon as possible. Uh.
We also have another one from our listener, Stacy. I
(24:56):
did not mean to do only rhyming people's names on
our listener mail segment. Stacy writes, Dear Tracy and Holly,
Greetings from the Antarctic Peninsula. My wife and I are
on a ten day excursion to Antarctica, and I have
always wanted to send you a postcard, so here it is.
I love your show and I listen as I drive
to and from work. Keep up the great work, Stacy,
and it's a lovely picture from Antarctica, which I UH
(25:19):
also feel a strange affinity for because one of my
dearest friends spent a significant amount of time they're doing
scientific research. So thank you, thank you, thank you to
both Tracy and Stacy for sending us postcards. If you
would like to write to us, that is easy as pie.
You can do it at History podcast at house to
Works dot com. You can also find us pretty much
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(25:42):
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(26:06):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com,
m
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy be Wilson, and I
apologize upfront because any listeners are going to be hearing
about this for the next couple of months. We're going
(00:23):
to Paris. It's true. Uh, if you want to get
in on that trip, because listeners can come with us, Uh,
you just go to our website. There is an option
in the menu bar at the top of the page
that says Paris trip exclamation point because of excitement, and
then that will give you all the details on booking.
Because we are going on this Paris trip in June,
and I have a little bit of the rabies about
(00:45):
France topics. So, uh, you're getting a two parter on
a French topic this week because I'm very excited and
it is the thing we will visit, at least I
will visit for sure when we are there. Literally only
everyone everyone has heard of what we call in the
US the Eiffel Tower actually fell, But that's a whole
(01:06):
other thing. Uh. That one structure itself and its construction
could easily be the subject of multiple episodes because there's
a whole fascinating story, particularly from the engineering and building standpoint.
Uh there, But the engineer it is named for, Gustava Fell,
contributed a great deal more to the world than that
one iconic structure. So we will talk about the building
(01:28):
of the turf l but we won't cover it in
complete exhaustive detail. And Gustava Fell's early life actually showed
no indication that he was going to end up famous
for his engineering work, and his later life actually went
in a totally different direction, and his expertise in iron
work was sought for projects throughout Europe and South America.
(01:50):
He also worked on one of the most iconic structures
in the United States as well, And his career is
interesting to me because it's mostly an impressive series of
successes except for one colossal scandal. Like I feel like
often when we talk about somebody who has become iconic historically,
it's like we're revealing all of the struggle and all
of the mistakes they made along the way. And in
(02:13):
this case, it's kind of like, yeah, he did that,
and it was on time and under budget, and also
that other one was on time and under budget, and
also this one was on time and under budget because
he was very exacting. So this is a little bit different,
uh than the I messed up a lot and then
I made a great thing. It's more like I made
a lot of great stuff. People just only remember one.
I was very competent. Yes, I was extraordinarily good at
(02:35):
what I did. Uh. And we will talk about some
criticisms of him as well. But in the first part
of this two parter, we're going to talk about his
early family life and how he eventually found himself working
with what we're very modern materials for the time. He
kind of stumbled into it. Uh. And then in the
second part, which will be the next episode, we will
delve into some of his most famous projects, as well
(02:56):
as the surprising turn that his efforts took in his
eight years. Alexandra Gustave I Fell was born December fifteenth,
eighteen thirty two. His family was originally from Germany. His
great great grandfather had moved to Paris in the early
seventeen hundreds, and the family trade was tapestry weaving up
until Alexandra Bunkauzenfel, who was Gustav's father, went into military
(03:20):
service instead of becoming a weaver. The elder Alexandra married
Gustave's mother, Katherine Melanie Munus, in the fall of eighteen
twenty four while he was stationed in Dijon that's roughly
two hundred miles southeast of Paris. Gustav had two sisters
born after him. There were Marie, who was born in
eighteen thirty four and Lure born in eighteen thirty six.
(03:41):
And Catherine was not a woman who married and had
kids and then stayed home to raise them. She was
a little unique for her time. She was actually an
entrepreneur with a very astute business instinct, and not long
after she became a mother, she decided that she would
take her family's business, which was charcoal, and expanded. She
arraigned for her company to become the distributor of coal
(04:02):
from more minds throughout France than they already had, in
order to capitalize on the growing need for coal in industry.
So both parents had very busy careers, but the family
was very close. Gustave and his mother especially were close.
But Catherine and Alexandra also prioritize their children, all of
their children and offered them an example of a dedicated
(04:23):
work ethic and a marriage of equals. When Catherine's coal
business started to grow really quickly, Alexandra left his civil
administrator job to go work with her, and together they
built a pretty nice fortune for the family. Eventually they
moved into a brewery business and they kept doing well there,
But they were also seen as outsiders in high society.
(04:44):
I was really dominated by old money families who had
been wealthy for generations, so their new money just didn't
have the same shine to it. Yeah, they did not
have clout in high society circles. And they were actually
running that brewery. They had just made a big investment
in it after they sold their their coal company. I
should also mention that you'll often see that Gustav and
(05:05):
his sisters were raised largely by their grandmother on his
mother's side, which she They did stay with her the
majority of the time, but both Catherine and Alexander made
a point to always go home and spend time with
their children and be with them as much as they
could be. Gaustav also became close with his chemist uncle
Jean Baptiste Mora, who ran a large distillery, and Molarat's
friend Michel Pray, also an industrial chemist who made a
(05:28):
name for himself in mineral mining, and these two men
were pretty highly influential in the development of the Fails worldview.
Both believed basically in questioning everything. His uncle was particularly
anti royalist, and both thought that you should question things,
both philosophically and scientifically. Gustav found school to be really challenging.
(05:51):
It was boring at best and excruciating at worst, but
two of his teachers really ignited a love of learning
for him when he got to be a teenager. He
had a literature teacher named Monsieur Clements and a history
teacher named Monsieur de Jardines, and their entry into his
education really inspired him to continue it. They helped him
(06:11):
get caught up on his work, which he had follen
behind on by meaning I saw one estimate that he
was like a year behind his peers because he had
just stopped bothering. Yeah. They also helped him gain admission
and to the College Santa barb in Paris, which they
hope would lead him to getting entry into a cold
polytechnique to finish up his education. And the youngfl had
(06:34):
traveled to Paris from Dijon for the first time when
he was twelve and During that trip, which he took
with his mother, he really fell in love with the city.
But even though he had seemed entirely excited as a
slightly older young man to attend school there, he pretty
quickly became homesick. After he started at college, stab he
eventually found amusements in seeking out opportunities, for example, to
(06:57):
dance with young ladies. He made a note that he
preferred nancing with English girls rather than French girls because
he found them less reserved, and he also would attend
the occasional seance. So he wasn't really focusing on his studies. Uh,
he didn't get really passionate about his education. He kind
of sat right in the middle of his class achievement wise.
After his second year, his performance on his exams hadn't
(07:18):
been good enough to get him entry into a coal polytechnique,
so instead he went to a close said trial. He
didn't seem very dismayed by this change of plans, and
the need to go to a less prestigious school didn't
seem to phase him all that much. He wasn't focused
on engineering or metallurgy in his studies. Those are things
that you might expect of the man who would become
known for building these massive iron structures. When it came
(07:41):
time to select a concentration, he went into chemistry, probably
thinking he might eventually take over his uncle's business, although
due to a politically generated falling out in the family
that never really happened. No. As I said, his uncle
was very outspoken and like to question everything, and that
cost him problem with other members of the family. Gustav
(08:03):
graduated from a concentral in eighteen fifty five, and while
he had focused on chemistry and actually had really done
pretty well in those studies, for a change, he also
had a pretty well rounded education. Eighteen fifty five was
also the year that f l asked his mother for
a season past the Exhibition Universal in Paris. London's Great
(08:23):
Exhibition of eighteen fifty one, which has come up on
this podcast a number of times before, including Joseph Paxton's
Crystal Palace, had been a massive success, and the French
were eager to outdo it, in part because they felt
that they had invented the idea of having these sort
of world's fairs, and that the British had stolen the
concept from them and then acted as though it was
their own. But in any case, Paris in eighteen fifty
(08:46):
five was alive with this desire to show off the
best and the brightest in the newly constructed Palais de
Landes three on the Chancels. In fact, the Exposition Universal
had really carved out a different space from the London
Expo in terms of national identity and areas of expertise.
So as the animosity waned and Britain and France started
(09:08):
building a more cordial relationship, which was cemented by Queen
Victoria's visit to the Prisian Expo, the French started focusing
more on showcasing their taste for design and art instead
of making a real run at trying to shame Britain's
more industrial and manufacturing focused show that had happened four
years prior. And Gustave Fel was on hand to see
(09:28):
and explore all of this. And while that experience must
have been enthralling and very exciting, young Gustav eventually had
to figure out a career path, and we will get
to that right after we first pause for a little
sponsor break. Since the plan to take over his uncle's
(09:50):
distillery was no longer in place by the time he
graduated from school, fl took a foundry apprenticeship with his
brother in law, Joseph Colin, and this was not a
paying position. So while i Fel used the opportunity to
learn as much as he could about iron founding, he
also started looking for a permanent job with an income immediately.
The next year, eighteen fifty six, it Fell visited the
(10:13):
offices and workshop of Charles Nipvou in the eighth Arrondissement
as one of a series of visits that he made
to inquire after work. This was a pretty fortuitous visit
because Nippoo was already at the forefront of the railway industry.
He designed both tracks and engines, and he offered Gustavo
Felt a job. I Fell would work as the private
(10:36):
secretary and would get an on the job education and
engineering and material science while he was at it. At
the same time, it Fell took economics classes through a
Sunday program at Ecode. Means, yeah, the ecodeman was basically
letting him have a private tutorship and getting full course
credit for it so that he could continue his work.
(10:56):
And it is kind of funny to me, this is
sort of that cases somebody just stumbling into what ends
up being the thing that defines them, because he was
visiting a lot of different offices and places along the
way when he happened to meet with Neva and just
kind of struck his moment. But this all seems ideal,
but Nava was in some serious financial trouble after a
(11:18):
really expensive project that he had been working on had
gone completely awry, and one day Neva just didn't show
up at the office and for two weeks he was
missing and the businesses bills and management went completely unattended.
NFL was actually afraid that his new boss had killed himself.
There were some clues that have fell had put together
and really feared for this man's life, but in reality
(11:40):
he seems to have had a nervous breakdown, and after
he returned to work, Gustav actually stayed with Neva to
help him close up the business, even though he knew
he was not going to get paid for these efforts because,
as we said, deep financial trouble. But Nava did find
a Fl a new job at a company de Chemin
de Faire de Luest that's the Western Railway Company, and
(12:01):
this was not the end of his relationship though with Nibva.
Gustav earned a hundred and twenty five francs a month
in his new position and worked with the chief engineer
as the company kept expanding its considerable railway holdings. That
chief engineer was Eugene flesh At, who was an innovator
in the use of sheet metal iron work. At this point,
iron as an architectural material was still pretty new in France,
(12:25):
and Fleshat had been a significant contributor in the slow
acceptance in France. England was a bit ahead of France
and incorporating iron into construction and had been experimenting with
it all the way back in the seventeen hundreds. Yet
some of that was economic, like it was just expensive
to start experimenting with this new material and France did
not have the money or interest in spending the money
(12:47):
to do that. And also some of it was aesthetic.
They weren't really ready to adopt this new thing yet.
That will come up in Part two as well. But
with the railway, fl designed his first structure. It was
a bridge seventy two eat uh that's just short of
twenty two that would be constructed with cast iron and
sheet iron, and this design was approved for construction for
(13:08):
the Saint Germain railway. At the same time, Nippo was
working to sell off his company, which he had never
really been good at running. He wanted to sell it
to a larger firm that would pay him to continue
to do engineering and design work without having to worry
about all the administrative tasks that he just couldn't get
a handle on trying to run his own business. He
(13:29):
sold to a Belgian company and not only got the
position he wanted, but also arranged for Gestava Fel to
be given a senior position in the French office as
head of research, which paid two in fifty francs a month. Yeah,
that was a big jump for him. That doubled his income.
He went from being like an entry level employee to
a senior employee at a different company. It was a
(13:49):
nice way of saying thank you for sticking with me
in that whole messy business. A while back, uh And
with the new Belgian company, Nevo secured a high profile project.
This is a bridge over the guard on the river
at Bordeaux that would link to previously separated rail systems
and Charles nabva entrusted a fell with the metal assembly.
He ran the entire side of that operation, and this
(14:11):
was no small ask because the project was huge and
it had only a twenty four month window for completion.
The project didn't just involve the iron bridge. Before the
construction could even start, it Fell had to set up
workshops and a temporary service bridge at the site so
that the iron work could be assembled there before it
was installed. But it Fell managed all of this and
(14:34):
the bridge work itself very efficiently. He used hydraulic pile driving,
which is a really new technique, to drive hollow caissons
into the riverbed that could serve as workspaces during construction.
And as a side note, Casson disease decompression sickness, characterized
by the formation of gas bubbles in the body when
a person moves quickly from a high pressure environment to
(14:56):
a lower pressure environment, is in fact named for this
con ruction technique, because these cassans would be pressurized so
that people could work in them underwater and then they
would go back to regular top side without really any
transition time. Uh. But there is no record of any
such illness happening on a Fell's Bordeaux Bridge project. The
(15:17):
only injury on record took place when a riveter fell
into the river during construction, and Gustavo Fell jumped into
the water to rescue the worker, and then he instituted
a series of new safety measures immediately after the whole
thing was done, including uh, the men always had to
be tethered with a rope if they were riveting up
(15:37):
on the bridge. And it should be noted though, that
the laborer who fell was actually believed to have been
intoxicated at the time of the accident. So while of
course they needed all these safety measures, he was not
being safe on the job to begin with. Part of
the reason that it Fell was so efficient was that
he was very precise and his design and calculations. While
(15:57):
other engineers were developing designs through trial and error, he
was doing really meticulous math before the project started to
make sure that his ideas were structurally sound. This bridge
was a success, and it led to it Fell's promotion
in eighteen sixty to Engineer General. He was given a
salary of nine thousand francs a year, plus a five
percent share of the profits on any of his projects.
(16:19):
He could also not be dismissed with less than a
year's notice. Yeah, that's a sweet deal and at this point,
Gustava Fel was successful, he was stable, and he was
in his late twenties, and what he really really wanted
was a family of his own. And he had dated
a number of women, and he even tried to become
engaged to one of the young ladies that he had dated,
(16:40):
but her family did not think he was of high
enough social standing. That's kind of his what we talked
about a moment ago with his parents being very successful
but never quite being accepted by the wealthier high society
kind of coming back to bite him. But he reunited
with a young woman from his hometown of Dijon that
he had known since childhood, and there he finally found
(17:00):
his match. Stav married Marie Goudlay on July eighteen sixty two. Marie,
who went by Marguerite, was the granddaughter of one of
the fl family business partners, so blending the two families
is a pretty natural fit. The two of them went
on to have five children. The first was a daughter
named Claire, who was born in eighteen sixty three, which
(17:21):
was the year after their wedding. Yes, she uh one
thing that I read suggested that she had just started
going by Marguerite to make things easier since his mother
was a marie and so they would be easy to
to differentiate when people were speaking about them. And this
marriage was a happy one, but unfortunately a series of
problems unfolded NFL's life soon after the wedding. While he
(17:44):
had been promoted again by the company, it quickly became
a parent that there were some serious problems with finances
and the business was not stable anymore, and he knew
he had to get out, and so after putting together
a few independent projects and some consulting tracks, he decided
he would just set out on his own and go
into business for himself. At the same time, he and
(18:05):
his new bride took on the full time care of
Gustav's sister, Lore, who had some serious health problems. She
died in the summer of eighteen sixty four, and Gustav,
who really doated on both of his sisters, grieved very deeply.
So he was in the midst of personal and professional
upheaval as he and Marguerite were starting their family. Fortunately,
(18:26):
that move, though, to work for himself, proved to be
a really good one. In the spring of the following year,
a Fel traveled to Egypt, as part of a lucrative
government contract he had gotten in which he was managing
the manufacturer of a large order of locomotives like several
dozen engines. While touring northern Africa, he visited the Suez
Canal construction site and he made the acquaintance of Ferdinand
(18:48):
de la Sepps, whose company was building it delas EPs,
and Gustav's business relationship with him would later be the
cause of a great deal of trouble for a fl
but that is going to come up in the second
part of its episode. When the French government decided to
host another expo in eighteen sixty seven, Gustav Fell hoped
to be involved in construction of the main hall, but
(19:10):
while he had been working on a lot of projects,
he didn't have a workshop of his own, so there
wasn't any way that he could capture a big contract
for this exhibition. Instead, he served as an assistant to
Jean Baptiste Kruntz, who was the director of works and designed,
among other things, the arch girders for one of the galleries,
which established the mathematical design rules of all wrought iron
(19:32):
construction going forward. Yeah, he was working really constantly on
a lot of projects, and as we had said, he
was very, very careful and meticulous with his math, and
he really set down a lot of the rules that
builders used going forward from that point. And while his
work on the exhibition was productive, even before the show opened,
gustav had begun looking for a place to set up
(19:54):
his own iron work so that he would not lose
out on future opportunities. In late eighteen sixty six, he
had secured a location in northern Paris to do just that,
and he began advertising his availability to design and build
projects from boilers to reservoirs. We will talk about his
early days offering full engineering and construction services and just
(20:14):
a moment, but we're going to pause before we do
and have a sponsor break. It was not an easy
run for Gustavo Fell getting his business off the ground.
While he did get a fair amount of work, it
was all relatively small contracts. He built things like small
(20:35):
bridges and gas works and even the iron framework for
a synagogue, but large scale projects were at least initially
few and far between. In October sixty eight, Gustava Fell
started a partnership with another ico, Central Alum, to form
the firm Gustavo fell a company. His partner too feel
Sawig was the junior partner, although he fronted a lot
(20:58):
more money than it failed it. Their initial contract was
for five years and was renewed when it expired. Nfl
continued to work really steadily throughout the end of the
eighteen sixties and basically established himself as the authority on
iron bridge and railway construction. And during this time he
developed many of the standards in both design and construction
(21:19):
processes that remained in place for decades. But he really
wanted to move beyond primarily building bridges and start working
on buildings. But as he looked into expanding his skills
into grander efforts, his actual work became more scarce. As
the eighteen sixties near their end, there was unrest in
France as Napoleon the Third was facing growing resentment after
(21:43):
making a number of bad moves that left France without
many allies in the period leading up to the Franco
Prussian War. Yeah, that's the very, very very quick and
dirty version of for a fl. He was more concerned
with his business and its health than he really seemed
to be with politics. But he became a sergeant in
the National Guard, and he sent Marguerite and their children
(22:05):
away from Paris when things got a little bit dicey
during the uprising, But mostly he was just really irritated
that he couldn't get to his work because parts of
the city were closed off. While this trouble in France
was playing out, it Fell sought out work outside of
the country to try to keep his business afloat. He
sent one of his associates to South America to work
on deals there, and continued to drum up projects in
(22:27):
Europe and Northern Africa. The South American efforts were very successful,
and it Fells firm was soon building railways and churches
and government buildings. Working abroad when his firm was responsible
for the entire projects start to finish, rather than serving
as a consultant, came with its own challenges. So, for example,
what would happen if something was wrong with the assembly
(22:47):
once they got it on site. It was not feasible
to expect a job to halt in Peru, for example,
so that a part could be cast in France and
then shipped over the Atlantic. So for those South American contracts,
Gustava Fell would first build the structure at his iron
works in Le Pere in the northwest section of Paris
to make sure they were perfect, and then those structures
(23:10):
would be taken apart and shipped in pieces to their
final destination, where those pieces were reassembled. But in eighteen
seventy three, this lucrative avenue of his business ended when
his Latin American business manager, Monsieur li Liever died. He
had been the one man that fel had really trusted
the handle contracts overseas, and without him, he knew it
(23:31):
was just not going to work. Yeah, he felt like
he could not possibly train someone up to be able
to do the things that Lillievre was doing, and also
he could not build up the level of trust that
he had had with that man. So he thought it
was better to just shutter that part of his business.
And this is kind of a downer place to leave things,
but we are going to end part one here so
(23:51):
that we can keep some of his most famous efforts
together in part two. And I also just kind of
wanted to do it as like a juxtaposition, because once
he it's into this second part of his life, it's
all really like success, success, success, Whereas I wanted to
kind of keep this one separate because it's it's a
little bit of foundering and figuring things out that he
was doing as a young man, and I like that. Yeah,
(24:15):
that good old Gustav Fel. Uh. Do you have some
listener mail for us? I do? I do? I do.
One is from our listener Tracy, who writes, Dear Tracy
and Holley, I'm a longtime listener who shares your love
of postcards, so I thought I would send you one
from Maui. So I'm just gonna be honest right now.
I read this because I'm selfish and I love Hawaii,
and it made me think of tropical things when it's
(24:36):
very cold outs. But Tracy goes on to say I
adore your show. I learned so much and appreciate how
accessible you make complicated historical stories. She also apparently likes
the way I laugh, which I appreciate not everyone does. Uh.
Thank you so much, Tracy, this is beautiful and it
makes me want to go to Hawaii as soon as possible. Uh.
We also have another one from our listener, Stacy. I
(24:56):
did not mean to do only rhyming people's names on
our listener mail segment. Stacy writes, Dear Tracy and Holly,
Greetings from the Antarctic Peninsula. My wife and I are
on a ten day excursion to Antarctica, and I have
always wanted to send you a postcard, so here it is.
I love your show and I listen as I drive
to and from work. Keep up the great work, Stacy,
and it's a lovely picture from Antarctica, which I UH
(25:19):
also feel a strange affinity for because one of my
dearest friends spent a significant amount of time they're doing
scientific research. So thank you, thank you, thank you to
both Tracy and Stacy for sending us postcards. If you
would like to write to us, that is easy as pie.
You can do it at History podcast at house to
Works dot com. You can also find us pretty much
everywhere on social media as missed in History UH and
(25:42):
you can go to our website, which is missed in
History dot com and see every episode of the show
that has ever existed, as well as show notes on
any of the ones that Tracy and I have worked
on together. And if you would like to subscribe to
the podcast that sounds great, you can do that on
the I Heart Radio app at Apple Podcasts and pretty
much anywhere you at your podcast. For more on this
(26:06):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com,
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