Gustave Eiffel, whose 300-meter tower had opened months earlier for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, was awarded France's highest civilian honor. Critics had once denounced the structure as a 'metal asparagus' and petitioned to halt its construction; by year's end it had become the world's tallest man-made structure and a symbol of French industrial pride.
When Eiffel first proposed his tower, fifty prominent Parisian artists and writers signed a public protest calling it a 'gigantic black smokestack' that would disgrace the city. Novelist Guy de Maupassant reportedly ate lunch in the tower's restaurant specifically because it was the only place in Paris from which he couldn't see the tower itself.
Eiffel had built his reputation on iron bridges and viaducts across Europe and had also engineered the internal skeleton for the Statue of Liberty. His tower for the 1889 World's Fair was meant to stand for just twenty years before demolition, but its usefulness as a radio transmission tower saved it—Eiffel personally lobbied the military, installing wireless telegraphy equipment to prove its worth.
By the time of his honor in late 1889, over two million visitors had already climbed or ridden lifts up the tower, and it had earned back a substantial part of its construction cost through ticket sales alone.
Key people: Gustave Eiffel