The Ferris wheel was the invention of a man named, well, George Washington Ferris. Come on, what did you think his name was going to be. Gustave Eiffel? It was designed for the 1893 Chicago Worlds Exposition, the first such exposition since the one in Paris five years earlier which introduced the world to the Eiffel Tower. From the beginning, the Chicago organizers sought to find some way to best the instantly iconic ower, but most of the design ideas submitted were of towers similar to the Eiffel only larger and differently shaped. None of this really seemed like a proper answer–more just a competitive gesture. But George Ferris’s novel idea for the wheel seized the organizer’s attention and thus we have the still-popular attraction featured at fairs, theme parks and other places I don’t go. Now, this wasn’t the wheel that we’re familiar with. Its scope was vastly different. There were 36 cars, each fitted with 40 revolving chairs and able to accommodate up to 60 people, giving a total capacity of 2,160. The wheel carried some 38,000 passengers daily and took 20 minutes to complete two revolutions, the first involving six stops to allow passengers to exit and enter and the second a nine-minute non-stop rotation, for which the ticket holder paid 50 cents. Actually the wheel had precursors that were similar in concept though not nearly as elaborate. Click here for a very good Wikipedia article on the history of the Ferris Wheel. It’s also covered in the excellent book ‘Devil In The White City’ which also somehow threads the story of America’s first serial killer though its narrative. Above is a mini-doc on the history of the whole wheel thing. Hey, it beats that silly doc about Disneyland that I posted yesterday. Do they even have a wheel at Mouse-schwitz? If they do it’s probably named the Disney Wheel, or the Mickey Wheel, or anything based on a character owned by the Disney Corporation.