As time grew short, it became imperative to resolve 

 the matter, and the Commission, in desperation, 

 awarded the contract to Otis in July 1887 for the 

 amount of $22,500.'" A curious footnote to the 

 affair appeared much later in the form of a published 

 interview " with W. Frank Hall, Otis' Paris repre- 

 sentative: 



"Yes," said Mr. Hall, "this is the first elevator of its kind. 

 Our people for thirty-eight years have been doing this work, 

 and have constructed thousands of elevators vertically, and 

 many on an incline, but never one to strike a radius of i6o 

 feet for a distance of over 50 feet. It has required a great 

 amount of preparatory study and we have worked on it for 

 three years." 



"That was before you got the contract?" 



"Quite so, but we knew that, although the French au- 

 thorities were very reluctant to give away this piece of work, 

 they would be bound to come to us, and so we were 

 preparing for them." 



Such supreme confidence must have rapidly evapo- 

 rated as events progressed. Despite the invaluable 

 advertising to be derived from an installation of such 

 distinction, the Otises would probably have defaulted 

 had they foreseen the difficulties which preceded 

 completion of the work. 



The proposed system (fig. 24) was based fundamen- 

 tally upon Otis' standard hydraulic elevator, but it was 

 recognizable only in basic operating principle (fig. 25). 

 Tracks of regular rail section replaced the guides be- 

 cause of the incline, and the double-decked cabin (fig. 

 29) ran on small flanged wheels. This much of the 



10 According to Otis Elevator Company, the final price, 

 because of extras, was $30,000. 



n In Pall Mall Gazette, as quoted in The Ejigineering and 

 Building Record and the Sanitary Engineer, May 25, 1889, vol. 19, 

 p. 345. 



Figure 24. — General arrangement of Otis ele 

 vator system in Eiffel Tower. (From Tk 

 Engineer (London), July ig, 1889, vol. 68, p. 58.) 



24 



BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



