Early writings from 1615 tell of a Great Wheel at the Ramadan festival in Constantinople. Early “wheels” had chairs that hung by rope from a large wheel that was turned by a team of men. Different versions of a Great Wheel were recorded across Europe and India over the next few centuries.

In 1887, the French erected the Eiffel Tower in Paris as a centerpiece for the 1889 World’s Fair. Four years later, Chicago was hosting the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and David Burnham, the fair’s lead architect, wanted an iconic structure to rival the Eiffel Tower.

At this same time, a carpenter, William Somers, was building 50-foot wooden wheels for Asbury Park, Atlantic City, and Coney Island. Somers had received a U.S. patent for his Observational Roundabout, basically an early version of the Ferris wheel.

George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. was one of the early riders on the Observational Roundabout. Ferris was a civil engineer who built bridges and tunnels. He formed G.W.G. Ferris & Co. for the purpose of testing metals for railroads and bridge builders and inspecting finished works.

George Ferris was hired by the organizers of the Chicago Exposition to inspect the exhibits’ steel for safety. There he met Daniel Burnham, with his big dream of building something spectacular.

Ferris had drawn his concept of an amusement wheel in 1891. His design was a wheel of enormous scale, using a steel rather than wood framework. After spending $25,000 of his own money on safety studies (equivalent to over $700,000 today), Ferris finally convinced Burnham that the structure was possible.

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. The Ferris wheel was run by two 1,000-horsepower reversible engines at a cost of $380,000 (about $1.2 million today). Luther Rice was the supervising engineer of the wheel. Imagine that job!

Becoming the tallest structure in the area, Ferris’s 264-foot vertical frame rotated around the center axle. The frame held 36 gondolas cars, each capable of holding up to 60 people for a total of 2,160 people per ride!

Fair patrons paid a 50-cent fee (about $10 today) for a 10- to 20-minute ride. Passengers could view the entire exposition, the surrounding area of Lake Michigan, and the city itself. In all, more than 1.4 million people rode on the Chicago wheel.

After the exposition, Ferris became entangled in multiple wheel-related lawsuits about debts he owed suppliers and the payments the fair owed him. In 1896, bankrupt and suffering from typhoid fever, he died at age 37.

The Ferris wheel was dismantled and moved to North Clark Street, Chicago, for several years. The planners for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, bought the wheel from a wrecking company. Two years later, it was detonated into scrap.

Doris Montag is a homespun historian and an exhibit curator who researches and displays historical collections of ordinary things, such as can openers, crochet, toy sewing machines, hand corn planters, powder compacts, egg cartons, and more. Contact or follow her on Facebook, HistoryofOrdinaryThings.