Civil engineer George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. was the inventor of the original Ferris Wheel. He was interested in the engineering potential of structural steel, and he established a company in Pittsburgh to test structural steel and to build bridges, starting with one over the Monongahela River at 6th Street in Pittsburgh (since demolished.)

In 1891, the World’s Columbian Exposition was getting ready to open on the Midway in Chicago in the spring of 1893, and the Director felt that they lacked a “wow factor”, like the Eiffel tower that made its debut at the Paris Exposition in 1889. He issued a challenge to the nation’s engineers: what can we build at our Exposition to trump the French? Ferris already had an idea for a vertical wheel to carry sightseers up into the air, but now he began to think more grandly, and he proposed a gigantic version of his wheel to the fair organizers. There were initial concerns but Ferris was persuasive, and his idea was approved. However, he would have to bear construction costs himself, and the exposition was set to open in four months.

On June 21, 1893, Ferris, local and national dignitaries, and a forty-piece band playing “America” rose high above the midway for the first time. Margaret Ferris toasted her husband’s accomplishment atop the 250-foot-diameter wheel. For Ferris, it was his finest moment. 

There is more to this story including the heartache that the wheel brought Ferris. Read the full story from Linda Hall Library by clicking here.

https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/george-washington-ferris/