George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.

Early life

George Ferris Jr. Was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on the 14th of February, 1859. The youngest of two children born to George Washington Gale Ferris Sr. and Martha Edgerton Hyde, his family moved to Nevada in 1864, where he grew up. His father worked doing horticulture for Carson, NV, gaining notoriety for his large importation of trees and designing most of the city's landscaping over the 1870s.

Education

 Ferris left Nevada in 1875 to begin his education, first at the military academy of Oakland, CA, where he graduated in 1876. He then went on to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was a charter member of RPI's Chi Phi chapter, as well as being a member of the Rensselaer Society of Engineers. Ferris would graduate RPI in 1881 with a civil engineering degree, going on to work in the rail and bridge business. Later in his career, he founded the G.W.G company, in order to enter into the business of rail and bridge inspection in the Pittsburg, PA area.

The Wheel

 With the World's Columbia exhibition of 1893 being held in Chicago and rapidly approaching, the directors of the event wished to outdo their French counterparts, who in 1889 had erected the Eifel tower. Responding to the challenge, Ferris sent in a grand plan for a spinning wheel which would lift riders in cars around its length, all while being structurally sound against the winds of the great lakes, possibly inspired by the Burdett Iron Works Wheel (?) in order to "...Out-Eifel Eifel". Gathering support, and more crucially, local investment, despite initial skepticism, he was able to get the wheel built. With 36 cars, each with 40 chairs, and a twenty minute run time, the wheel wowed its audience, carrying roughly 38000 passengers daily. The wheel itself lived until 1906, carrying an estimated 2.5 million passengers throughout its lifetime. Ferris claimed the management of the exhibition had failed to pay him and his investors of the roughly 750000 in profit which his wheel produced, and spent the next two years in litigation to settle. 

Death

 Unfortunately, Ferris would pass of typhoid fever in Pittsburg Mercy Hospital on November 22nd, 1896, only a year after his father had. His ashes were held in the crematorium for a year, waiting for a relative to collect them. 

References

“ASHES of GEORGE W.G. FERRIS.; Report That a Pittsburg Undertaker Is Holding Them for Payment of Funeral Expenses. (Published 1898).” The New York Times, 2023, www.nytimes.com/1898/03/08/archives/ashes-of-george-wg-ferris-report-that-a-pittsburg-undertaker-is.html. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.

“Chicago’s Great Ferris Wheel of 1893.” Archive.org, 2022, web.archive.org/web/20130118143455/www.hydeparkhistory.org/newsletter.html. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.“Famous Chi Phi Members in Science and Medicine | Chi Phi Fraternity.” Archive.org, 2022, web.archive.org/web/20121216040146/chiphi.org/famous-chi-phi-members-science-and-medicine. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.

“George Washington Gale Ferris Jr - History of Nevada - Carson City Convention and Visitors Bureau.” Archive.org, 2023, web.archive.org/web/20130204234648/www.visitcarsoncity.com/history/people/george_ferris.php. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.

“INVENTOR FERRIS IS DEAD.; the Man Who Built the Great Wheel for the World’s Fair. (Published 1896).” The New York Times, 2023, www.nytimes.com/1896/11/23/archives/inventor-ferris-is-dead-the-man-who-built-the-great-wheel-for-the.html. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.

“Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Alumni Hall of Fame.” Rpi.edu, 2018, www.rpi.edu/about/alumni/inductees/ferris.html. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.Wikipedia Contributors. “George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Feb. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Gale_Ferris_Jr. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.---.

“Rensselaer Society of Engineers.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Oct. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rensselaer_Society_of_Engineers. Accessed 24 Feb. 2023.