Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: Construction of the Eiffel Tower
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (122) · March 31st, 2008 · Add a Comment
Today in History – March 31, 1889 – Eiffel Tower opens. The 300m Eiffel Tower was commissioned to commemorate the French Revolution. Amazingly, all of the elements were prepared in Gustav Eiffel’s factory located at Levallois-Perret on the outskirts of Paris. There were 18,000 pieces used to construct the Tower. Each piece was designed and produced with an accuracy of a tenth of a millimetre. The construction crew of 150 to 300 workers assembled the tower on site like a gigantic erector set. The foundation work began in January 1887 and was completed in five months. The tower was assembled twenty-one months later on March 31, 1889. Eiffel received his decoration from the Legion of Honour on the narrow platform at the top.”
Eiffel’s accomplishments over a century ago are amazing considering the technology of his time. Yet there is still a lesson for us today in the benefits of lean construction techniques, an approach that maximizes value to the customer and minimizes waste.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on the Eiffel Tower and Construction Engineering. For related educational resources, visit the Civil Engineering Education, Construction Engineering Education, or Architectural Engineering Education community sites.
Also today in 1966, the U.S.S.R. launches first lunar orbiter.
Tags: Architectural Engineering · Civil Engineering · Construction Engineering · General Engineering, Engineering Science
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