Modern Marvels celebrates the ingenuityinvention and imagination found in the world around us. From commonplace items like ink and coffee to architectural masterpieces and engineering disasters, the hit series goes beyond the basics to provide insight and history into things we wonder about and that impact our lives. This series tells fascinating stories of the doers, the dreamers and sometime schemers that create everyday items, technological breakthroughs and manmade wonders. The hit series goes deep to explore the leading edge of human inspiration and ambition. Episode Eiffel Tower – It is called the Tower of Towers, a striking symbol of not only a city and its nation but also of the self assurance and promise of a new age in art and architecture. When it was built over a century ago the Eiffel Tower provoked widespread outrage among some of France’s most prominent citizens of the day. This documentary brings the captivating story behind one of the most recognizable engineering marvels of the late nineteenth century. It is a monumental tale of the technological challenges and architectural breakthroughs brought about by the construction of this preeminent hallmark of the City of Lights. To the people of France, and to citizens of the world, Gustav Eiffel’s 320 meter Tower is more than an unsurpassed technological and engineering wonder, conceived and built to astound the public at the 1889 Paris Exposition … it is a symbol of triumphant spirit, demonstrating how an innovative metal matrix can form a structure whose posture reinforces an aesthetic of glory. This episode of Modern Marvels provides an historical tour of Paris’s Eiffel Tower. Completed in 1889, the Eiffel Tower remains a symbolic icon of France’s history and the industrial age. From the immense buttresses at its base to constructor Gustave Eiffel’s personal apartment and aerodynamics laboratory at its pinnacle this is an unforgettable historical tour of the world’s most famous and fabled tower.
