Today in HistoryâJune 21: The World Welcomes the Ferris Wheel
Consider this: Would you ride for 20 minutes on a revolving wheel that stood some 264 feet tall and carried 2,160 passengers?
Today, most of us would say, âOf course, Iâd ride a Ferris wheel.â But would you have done it in the last decade of the 19th century? If so, you would have been among the first on the planet to do so.
And thatâs exactly what more than 1 million people did in Chicago between this day in 1893 and November 1, when the Chicago Worldâs Fair ended. The 50-cent ride (about $18.50 in 2026 dollars) was the hit of the exposition.
It was also a bit of a miracle.
In envisioning the Worldâs Columbian Exposition, master architect Daniel Burnham had a challenge: create a spectacle as amazing as the Eiffel Tower (which had been the centerpiece of the 1889 World Fair in Paris).
The Statue of Liberty stood 41 feet taller than the first Ferris wheel.
Enter George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., who had an idea for an enormous revolving steel wheel. When he proposed the idea in 1892, he was dismissed as âthe Man with Wheels in His Head,â but just months before the fair was to openâin no small part because no better ideas about how to âout-Eiffel Eiffelâ had emergedâFerris got the go-ahead to build his wheel.
When the fair opened on May 1, 1893, the wheel wasnât even close to ready. More than a month later, Ferrisâs wife, Margaret, would be among the first to test the ride on June 11, 1893, followed by a junket for reporters two days later.
Eight days after that, the public, displaying perhaps more hope than sense, packed into the gondolas for the ride of their lives.
- 36: Gondolas on the first Ferris wheel
- 89,320 pounds: Weight of the wheelâs axle
- 200 pounds: Dynamite used to destroy the wheel in 1906
- 1788: The U.S. Constitution becomes the official law of the land after New Hampshireâs ratification
- 1913: Georgia âTinyâ Broadwick becomes the first woman to parachute from a plane
- 2009: Greenland, part of Denmark, becomes self-governing
