Pssst, bonjour Smarty Pants.
If you couldn't tell by the French music and me speaking the little bit of French I know, right now I'm in Paris, France, currently riding a bicycle while wearing a beret and eating lots of fromage or cheese.
One might say too much cheese.
Of course, you can't visit Paris without seeing one of the most famous monuments in all the world.
Any guesses what it is?
Is it the Waffle Tower?
The Jenga Tower, or the Eiffel Tower.
Why, of course, it's the Eiffel Tower.
A Jenga Tower probably wouldn't last very long.
Ah, there it is, the Eiffel Tower.
All 984 feet of it.
It's as awe -inspiring today as it was back in 1889 when it was built.
I just wish Gustave Eiffel could see how beloved and magnifique his creation still remains.
Merci beaucoup, narrator Fidel.
That's trusty narrator in French. Gustave Eiffel?
Inventor of the Eiffel Tower?
130 years ago? But how?
He asked, knowing it was just an actor pretending to be someone from the past. Oh, I was going to say some magical cheese brought me back to life.
But the smarty prince probably wouldn't fall for that.
Agreed. Of course, this cheese is magical in other ways.
Please allow me to give you a tour of my tower.
I accept. Plus, that's going to save me like 30 bucks.
So, where do we start?
On this elevator. Going up.
Whoa, this elevator has an amazing 360 -degree view.
I see Paris. I see France.
I may need to change my underpants.
Right now, we are headed to the top of what was once the tallest structure in the world.
When we built the Eiffel Tower, it was almost twice the height of the next tallest structure.
Ooh, any guesses what that was, smarty pants?
Was it the Great Pyramid, the Great Wall of China, Big Ben, or the Washington Monument?
The answer is the Washington Monument.
And the Eiffel Tower remained the tallest structure in the world until a building in New York became the world's tallest structure in 1930.
Nope, not the Empire State Building.
the Chrysler Building.
Hey, I'm giving you a free tour here.
Are you just going to talk about other buildings and monuments or are you going to talk about my Eiffel Tower?
Sorry, Gustav. The Smarty Pants and I would love to know more about your Eiffel Tower.
Like, why did you build it in the first place?
Is it true that it almost got torn down?
And why doesn't it fall down in the wind?
And what surprises will we find at the top?
Get ready for another whiff of history, science, and cheese.
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Hey guys, Trusty here.
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I can't help noticing how much steel went into making this tower.
My tower is made up of over 18 ,000 metal parts and has about 2 .5 million rivets holding all of those parts together.
Whoa. When you add it all up, the Eiffel Tower weighs over 20 million pounds.
Now, Gustave, I know you didn't just wake up one day and decide, you know, I think I'll build a 1 ,000 -foot -tall, 20 -million -pound Iron Tower in the middle of Paris.
What really happened?
The 1889 World's Fair happened.
This is Chet Nickerson somehow reporting from the 1880s.
The 1889 World's Fair will be held in Paris and will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.
To make it extra special, a contest is being held to design something to serve as the entranceway to the fairgrounds.
Architects and designers from all over France have been invited to submit proposals to the design contest. I, for one, hope someone builds a really big, fancy steel tower.
Ah, and that is just what me and some people who worked at my company proposed.
And we won. That's great.
Who helped you come up with the original design?
Let's see. There was Maurice Cochelin, Emile Noguier, and Steven Sovestra.
Shouldn't it be called the Eiffel and all those other people tower?
Uh, perhaps. But I put up some money to build it, so...
I got to name it. Mm -hmm.
Speaking of building it, how did you know how?
No one had ever built anything 600 feet tall before, let alone nearly a thousand.
My company had a lot of experience working with iron, and we were experts at building bridges.
Oh, and I recently done a little work on another famous structure.
Oh, which famous structure was that, Smarty Pants?
The Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building or the Leaning Tower of Pisa?
If you said the Statue of Liberty, you're right!
I constructed an internal iron skeleton that the Statue of Liberty could be built around.
What we learned from doing that helped us build the Eiffel Tower in world -record time!
We put the whole thing up in just two years, two months and five days.
That's fast. First level.
We're about 200 feet up.
This level has an observation platform and a few restaurants.
Nom nom nom nom nom!
But let's keep going.
Allons -y! Believe it or not, the Eiffel Tower was originally supposed to come down almost as fast as it went up.
Seriously? The city of Paris only agreed to let it stand for 20 years.
After that, they were planning to take it apart and use it as scrap metal. But with some quick thinking, I was able to save it.
Hmm. Smarty pants. What do you think Gustave did to keep them from tearing down his tower?
Did he A. Build a wall around it?
B. Put a radio antenna on top of it?
Or C, hide a safe holding a million dollars somewhere inside of it?
The answer is, he put a radio antenna on top.
Suddenly, my tower was very valuable to the government because they could use it to send and receive messages, especially to soldiers in the military.
Some say the Eiffel Tower helped win World War I by intercepting crucial enemy communications.
Whoa. I'm sure most people were thrilled that you could save such a valuable national symbol.
Not everybody. Before I even built the tower, 300 famous Parisians signed a petition trying to stop us from building it.
Why? They thought it was ugly.
They called it a useless and monstrous tower.
Monstrous! Can you believe it?
Other critics called it a truly tragic street lamp, a gigantic black factory chimney, an odious column of bolted metal, One famous author even began eating his lunch every day at the café directly under the tower.
Because it was the one place in the city that he couldn't see it.
That hurts. But c 'est la vie.
Second level, 400 feet up.
You know, if you wanted to, trust me, instead of riding the elevator, you could have climbed about 750 steps to get here.
I'm good. In the old days, I'd climb a spiral staircase to 600 feet from here to the top.
Talk about windy. That was a good way to lose your beret.
The spiral stairs have since been removed.
You know, Gustave, for some reason, I always thought the Eiffel Tower was black.
But it's not. Nope.
Today it's a color they literally call Eiffel Tower Brown.
And guess what? they actually paint it in three different shades, getting slightly lighter as they go up.
Oddly enough, they paint it three different shades so it doesn't look like it gradually changes color.
Huh? It's because of how the silhouette looks against the colors of the sky.
Weird. But wait, you said today it's brown.
Was it a different color before?
No, it was six different colors before.
Since 1899, they repainted the whole thing every seven years, Yes, trying different colors because why not?
Painting the entire Eiffel Tower sure must take a lot of paint.
60 tons, to be exact.
And it takes about three years to complete the job.
So, yeah, it's not a weekend project.
But keeping a fresh coat of paint on the tower helps prevent it from rusting away.
Let's see. Today, the Eiffel Tower is brown, and years ago, it was yellow.
But what color was it when it was first constructed?
Any ideas, Smarty Pants?
I'll give you a hint.
The French flag is red, white, and blue.
It's one of those three.
Did you say les bleus?
Great guess, but it was actually red.
Imagine a huge red Eiffel Tower.
That's actually pretty cool.
That's the thing about the Eiffel Tower.
It's constantly changing in one way or another.
For example, did you know that right now, it's probably a few inches taller and when we first started talking?
It's growing? That's crazy.
How? I'll tell you.
Yes, you will, but right after this quick break.
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Now back to WhoSmarted.
My new friend Gustav Eifel, who, along with some unnamed friends, built the Eifel Tower, just said the Eifel Tower is somehow magically growing.
So how is that? Over the course of a day, the tower will often grow six inches and then shrink back to its original size again.
What could be causing the tower to grow and shrink, Smarty Pants?
Is it the weight of the tourists?
Heat from the sun. Or constant snacking.
The answer, of course, is heat from the sun. Thanks to something called thermal expansion, the tower's metal parts expand when they get hot and shrink when they cool off, causing the tower to grow slightly taller and shorter.
All right, we've reached the 984 -foot mark, trusty narrator.
We've made it to the top.
You weren't kidding about it being windy up here, Gustav.
It feels like the tower might be blowing over.
Relax. It's all a part of the tower's design.
It'll sway up to five inches back and forth in high winds, but trust me, trusty, it's not going anywhere.
If you say so. Now follow me for one more cool surprise.
Whoa! Is this an apartment at the top of the Eiffel Tower?
Indeed. It was once my private apartment where I hosted famous people of my day, like inventor Thomas Edison.
Wow, this is some view.
On a clear day, they say you can see 50 miles in every direction.
And check this out.
Welcome to my laboratory.
Cool. I conducted all kinds of experiments here.
Ooh. For example, I built a wind tunnel so I could study how aerodynamics affect airplanes and automobiles.
I also used my lab for astronomy and physics experiments.
In fact, it was an experiment here at the top of the Eiffel Tower that led to the discovery of cosmic rays.
That's incredible, Gustav.
And I have one last surprise.
Watch. Whoa, look at all those twinkling lights.
The Tower is covered with 20 ,000 light bulbs, which twinkle every hour on the hour for five minutes.
It took 25 mountain climbers five months to install them.
No wonder they call Paris the City of Light.
Say, can we take a selfie together here at the top of the Eiffel Tower?
Of course! Say cheese!
On second thought, let's take a break from the cheese.
a smarty sibling shout out to pen and rose in thorndale ontario you told us who smarted is the one podcast all siblings can agree on and that makes long trips to hockey tournaments more fun and less fighty i'd call that a big win for everyone thanks for smarting with us you too this episode the eiffel tower was written by steve maccarone melcher and voiced by teah Ascargo Garland Adam Fritz Davis and Jerry Colbert Technical direction and sound design by Josh LeHamburger Hahn Who Smarted is recorded and mixed at The Relic Room Studios Our associate producer is Max Kokovine Kamaski The theme song
is by Brian Suvid Suarez with lyrics written and performed by Adam Tex Davis Who Smarted was created and produced by Adam Tex Davis and Jerry Colbert This has been an Atomic Entertainment production New Smart Heads
