Reference EIFFEL
Reference EIFFEL
Reference EIFFEL
Early career[edit]
The Bordeaux bridge, Eiffel's first major work
After graduation, Eiffel had hoped to find work in his uncle's workshop in Dijon, but a family dispute
made this impossible. After a few months working as an unpaid assistant to his brother-in-law, who
managed a foundry, Eiffel approached the railway engineer Charles Nepveu, who gave Eiffel his first
paid job as his private secretary.[12] However, shortly afterwards Nepveu's company went bankrupt,
Nepveu found Eiffel a job designing a 22 m (72 ft) sheet iron bridge for the Saint Germaine railway.
Some of Nepveu's businesses were then acquired by the Compagnie Belge de Matériels de Chemin
de Fer: Nepveu was appointed the managing director of the two factories in Paris, and offered Eiffel
a job as head of the research department. In 1857 Nepveu negotiated a contract to build a railway
bridge over the river Garonne at Bordeaux, connecting the Paris-Bordeaux line to the lines running
to Sète and Bayonne, which involved the construction of a 500 m (1,600 ft) iron girder bridge
supported by six pairs of masonry piers on the river bed. These were constructed with the aid of
compressed air caissons and hydraulic rams, both innovative techniques at the time. Eiffel was
initially given the responsibility of assembling the metalwork and eventually took over the
management of the entire project from Nepveu, who resigned in March 1860. [13]
Following the completion of the project on schedule Eiffel was appointed as the principal engineer of
the Compagnie Belge. His work had also gained the attention of several people who were later to
give him work, including Stanislas de la Roche Toulay, who had prepared the design for the
metalwork of the Bordeaux bridge, Jean Baptiste Krantz and Wilhelm Nordling. Further promotion
within the company followed, but the business began to decline, and in 1865 Eiffel, seeing no future
there, resigned and set up as an independent consulting engineer. He was already working
independently on the construction of two railway stations, at Toulouse and Agen, and in 1866 he
was given a contract to oversee the construction of 33 locomotives for the Egyptian government, a
profitable but undemanding job in the course of which he visited Egypt, where he visited the Suez
Canal which was being constructed by Ferdinand de Lesseps. At the same time he was employed
by Jean-Baptiste Kranz to assist him in the design of the exhibition hall for the Exposition
Universelle which was to be held in 1867. Eiffel's principal job was to draw up the arch girders of
the Galerie des Machines. In order to carry out this work, Eiffel and Henri Treca, the director of
the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers,[14] conducted valuable research on the structural properties
of cast iron, definitively establishing the modulus of elasticity applicable to compound castings.
Eiffel et Cie[edit]