Reaching for the Skies—Exploring the Wonder of Ferris Wheels!

Hello, young thrill-seekers and adventure enthusiasts! Get ready to embark on a breathtaking ride that will take you high above the ground and fill your heart with excitement. Today we’ll explore the history and appeal of Ferris wheels. Ferris wheels are more than just a dizzying experience. They are engineering marvels that offer panoramic views and unforgettable moments. So, buckle up, hold on tight, and let’s take a spin as we delve into the wondrous world of Ferris wheels, where fun and fascination await at every turn!

A Ferris wheel is an amusement ride consisting of a giant vertical revolving wheel with passenger cars suspended on its outer edge. It is commonly called a big wheel in the United Kingdom.

The Ferris wheel got its name from George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. who made one for Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

With a height of 264 ft, the Ferris wheel was the tallest attraction at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, where it opened to the public on June 21, 1893. It was intended to rival the 1,063 feet Eiffel Tower, the centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition.

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. Over the next 19 weeks of the World’s Columbian Exposition, over 1.4 million people paid 50 cents for a 20-minute ride and access to an aerial panorama few had ever seen before.

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 generic term Ferris wheel is now used for all such structures, which have become the most common type of amusement ride at state fairs in the United States.

Some of the largest modern Ferris wheels have cars mounted on the outside of the rim, with electric motors to independently rotate each car to keep it upright. People sometimes refer to these wheels as observation wheels and their cars as capsules. However, these alternative names are also used for wheels with conventional gravity-oriented cars.

A Ferris wheel (sometimes called a big wheel, observation wheel, or, in the case of the very tallest examples, giant wheel) is a nonbuilding structure consisting of a rotating upright wheel with multiple passenger-carrying components (commonly referred to as passenger cars, cabins, tubs, capsules, gondolas, or pods) attached to the rim in such a way that as the wheel turns, they are kept upright, usually by gravity.

Since the original 1893 Chicago Ferris wheel there have been nine world’s tallest-ever Ferris wheels. The current record holder is the 550 feet High Roller in Las Vegas, Nevada, which opened to the public in March 2014.

A Ferris wheel has fixed cars, but an eccentric wheel has cars that move as it rotates.

The two most famous eccentric wheels are Wonder Wheel, at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park, Coney Island in New York City, and Pixar Pal-A-Round (previously Sun Wheel and Mickey’s Fun Wheel), at Disney California Adventure, California. The latter is a replica of the former. There is a second replica in Yokohama Dreamland, Japan.

So now that you know the history of Ferris wheels, enjoy the next one you ride.

AIME