The Eiffel Tower, which was built to be one of the main attractions at the Paris World’s Fair in 1889, gathered some more attention yesterday as a helicopter airlifted a DAB+ (digital audio) antenna to the top of the monument, according to Reuters. From the moment the helicopter took off on a dark, cloudy day and lifted the antenna to the structure’s pinnacle, it took less than 10 minutes to attach the new telecom transmission TDF (TeleDiffusion de France) antenna. Voila!
The 19.69 ft antenna antenna was attached to the top of the 1,025-foot structure, which was the world’s tallest manmade structure for 40 years until the Chrysler Building in New York City topped it. Building the tower employed 150 workers in the Levallois-Perret factory and between 150 and 300 workers on the construction site, who used 2,500,000 rivets, 8,046 tons of iron and 61 tons of paint.
The Eiffel Tower was set to be demolished in 1910, according to Toureiffel.Paris. But by the end of the century, it began to be used for one of the first radio transmissions in Morse code. In 1908, Gustave Eiffel offered the tower to the military for the installation of a radio antenna at its summit. A year later, a permanent radio station was built underneath the tower and Gustave Eiffel was granted an extension to his concession for another 70 years.
It has been used for broadcasting ever since, including intercepting and deciphering German coded radiograms in World War 1, broadcasting the first TV signals in the late 1920s and later the first digital TV signals, and radio calls to taxis.
Reader Interactions