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Kathryn Gibbs Davis is the award-winning author of more than 20 fiction and non-fiction titles. These include picture books, early chapter books, middle grade novels, YA novels, and one film produced for children. She has also created two series (mystery and sports).

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Kathryn Gibbs Davis, illus. by Gilbert Ford. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-547-95922-1

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With the 1893 Chicago World's Fair on the horizon, American engineer George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. won a design contest for what would become the Ferris wheel, a "structure that would dazzle and move, not just stand still like the Eiffel Tower" (the star of the previous World Fair). Despite naysayers ("It's undignified," grouses one onlooker), George and his crew plowed forward with plans for the giant, circular steel structure, unveiling the machine at the fair's opening. Davis delivers a tense and satisfying underdog story, while Ford creates a stylized 19th-century landscape, setting impressionistic backgrounds against the hard-edged geometric shapes of the wheel and other structures, colored in deep, subdued blues and violets. Direct quotations and captions explaining historical detail keep the context of the story in sharp focus. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Jodi Reamer, Writers House. Illustrator's agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Sept.)

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Children's Book Review: Mr. Ferris and His Wheel by Kathryn Gibbs Davis, illus. by Gilbert Ford. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-547-95922-1

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Kathryn Gibbs Davis, illus. by Gilbert Ford. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-547-95922-1 More By and About This Author With the 1893 Chicago World's Fair on the horizon, American engineer George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.

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Kathryn Gibbs Davis - Mr. Ferris and His Wheel

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A fun, fact-filled text by Kathryn Gibbs Davis combines with Gilbert Ford's dazzling full-color illustrations to transport readers to the 1893 World's Fair, where George Ferris and his big, wonderful wheel lifted passengers to the skies for the first time.

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The Story Of The Ferris Wheel - George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. Documentary / George Ferris

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Today is Valentine's Day and ModestoNews.org is here to bring you the tragic story of the inventor of the iconic Ferris Wheel, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., on this his birthday. The voice over in this video is by: Mick V. Rubalcava, the Publisher of ModestoNews.org The music in this video is also provided by: Mick V.

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PRINTED FROM American National Biography Online. © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single article in American National Biography Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy).

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Ferris, George Washington Gale, Jr. (1859-1896), civil engineer and builder of the Ferris Wheel | American National Biography

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PRINTED FROM American National Biography Online. © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single article in American National Biography Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy).

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Originally the American answer to the Eiffel Tower, the summertime amusement became a hallmark of summer fun

In late 1890, Daniel Burnham, the eminent architect charged with turning a boggy square mile of Chicago into a world-dazzling showpiece, assembled an all-star team of designers and gave them one directive: "Make no little plans." Burnham was laboring in the shadow of a landmark erected the year before in Paris, an elegant wrought iron structure rising a thousand feet into the air.

But nobody in the States had an answer for the Eiffel Tower. Oh, there were proposals: a tower garlanded with rails to distant cities, enabling visitors to toboggan home; another tower from whose top guests would be pushed off in cars attached to thick rubber bands, a forerunner of bungee jumping. Eiffel himself proposed an idea: a bigger tower. Merci, mais non. As plans for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago took shape, there was a void where its exclamation point was meant to stand.Burnham spoke before a group of engineers employed on the project and chided them for their failure of imagination. To avoid humiliation, he said, they needed to come up with "something novel, original, daring and unique." One of their number, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., a 33-year-old engineer from Pittsburgh whose company was charged with inspecting the steel used by the fair, was struck by a brainstorm and quickly sketched a huge revolving steel wheel. After adding specifications, he shared the idea with Burnham, who balked at the slender rods that would carry people to a height taller than the recently opened Statue of Liberty. "Too fragile," he said.

Ferris was hardly the first to imagine such a wheel. In fact, a carpenter named William Somers was building 50-foot wooden wheels at Asbury Park, Atlantic City and Coney Island; a roundabout, he called it, and he'd even patented his design. But Ferris had not only been challenged to think big; the huge attendance expected at the fair inspired him to bet big. He spent $25,000 of his own money on safety studies, hired more engineers, recruited investors. On December 16, 1892, his wheel was chosen to answer Eiffel. It measured 250 feet in diameter, and carried 36 cars, each capable of holding 60 people.

More than 100,000 parts went into Ferris' wheel, notably an 89,320-pound axle that had to be hoisted onto two towers 140 feet in the air. Launched on June 21, 1893, it was a glorious success. Over the next 19 weeks, more than 1.4 million people paid 50 cents for a 20-minute ride and access to an aerial panorama few had ever beheld. "It is an indescribable sensation," wrote a reporter named Robert Graves, "that of revolving through such a vast orbit in a bird cage."

But when the fair gates closed, Ferris became immersed in a tangle of wheel-related lawsuits about debts he owed suppliers and that the fair owed him. In 1896, bankrupt and suffering from typhoid fever, he died at age 37. A wrecking company bought the wheel and sold it to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Two years later, it was dynamited into scrap.

So died the one and only official Ferris wheel. But the invention lives on in the ubiquitous imitators inspired by the pleasure Ferris made possible. Eiffel's immortal icon is undoubtedly une pièce unique. But at boardwalks, county fairs and parish festivals around the globe millions whirl through the sky in neon-lit wheels and know the sensation that, years later, Joni Mitchell put into words. "Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels," she sang, "the dizzy dancing way you feel." Summertime riders know just what she means.

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In late 1890, Daniel Burnham, the eminent architect charged with turning a boggy square mile of Chicago into a world-dazzling showpiece, assembled an all-star team of designers and gave them one directive: "Make no little plans." Burnham was laboring in the shadow of a landmark erected the year before in Paris, an elegant wrought iron structure rising a thousand feet into the air.

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THE HISTORY OF THE FERRIS WHEEL

The Ferris wheel may be one of the greatest inventions of all time. It turned 100 years old in 1993.

George Washington Ferris, a civil engineer from Illinois, invented the Ferris wheel in the 1890's. The first Ferris wheel was built for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair in 1893. The total Cost of the wheel was $300,000.00. Mr. Ferris' invention was and still is the largest wheel ever built. It weighed 1,300 tons (that's about how much a herd of 2,000 dairy cows would weigh !). The Ferris wheel stood 25 stories high and held over 1,400 passengers. From the top of the ride, passengers could see 50 miles. It took 20 minutes for the enormous wheel to make one complete turn. After the Chicago World's Fair, the Ferris wheel was taken to the 1904 St. Louis Exposition.

After the Exposition, the wheel was returned to Chicago and dismantled because it was just too expensive to keep the wheel in operation. The metal from the Ferris wheel was used to build a large ship, the U.S.S. Illinois, during World War I.

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The Ferris wheel may be one of the greatest inventions of all time. It turned 100 years old in 1993. George Washington Ferris, a civil engineer from Illinois, invented the Ferris wheel in the 1890's. The first Ferris wheel was built for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair in 1893.