Great Wheel | |
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General information | |
Location | Earls Court, London |
Coordinates | 51°29′18″N0°11′56″W / 51.48835°N 0.19889°W |
Construction started | 1894 |
Opening | July 17, 1895 |
Demolished | 1907 |
Owner | The Gigantic Wheel and Recreational Towers Company |
Height | 94 m (308 ft) |
Design and construction | |
Structural engineer | Adam Gaddelin and Gareth Watson |
Main contractor | Maudslay, Sons and Field |
The Great Wheel, also known as the Gigantic Wheel, or Graydon Wheel, was built for the Empire of India Exhibition at Earls Court, London, in the United Kingdom. Construction began in March 1894 at the works of Maudslay, Sons and Field in Greenwich [1] [2] and it opened to the public on 17 July 1895. [3] Modelled on the original Ferris Wheel which featured at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, US, it was 94 metres (308 ft) tall [4] and 82.3 metres (270 ft) in diameter. [5] [6] [7] and weighed about 900 tons. [8] It stayed in service until 1906, by which time its 40 cars (each with a capacity of 30 persons) had carried over 2.5 million passengers. It was demolished in 1907 [9] following its last use with the Imperial Austrian Exhibition [10] of 1906 as it was no longer profitable to run.
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Technocosmos, later renamed Technostar, was an 85-metre (279 ft) tall giant Ferris wheel that was built for the Expo '85 World Fair in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. It carried almost 3 million passengers during the exposition.
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