“I ought to be jealous of the tower. She is more famous than I am.” – Gustave Eiffel.

Gustave Eiffel was born on 15 December 1832 in the city of Dijon, the historical capital of the Burgundy region of France. His family name is Bönickhausen and that is the name under which his birth was registered, but the family took the name Eiffel from the name of the mountains near to where they emigrated from in Germany. Gustave’s surname though, was not formally changed until 1880.

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Although close to his parents, his mother especially, due to their work commitments, Gustave lived with his grandmother. His mother sold her business in 1843 and retired.

Although fairly successful with his education, he didn’t take it seriously enough in his early years as he found it boring. However, he learned a lot about chemistry and mining from Jean-Baptiste Mollerat who was his uncle, and who owned a large chemical works and his friend Michel Perret who was a chemist. Due to their influence and that of some of his teachers, Gustave Eiffel went on to attend college at Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, specialising in chemistry. He graduated in 1855, and Gustave’s mother bought him a season ticket to the World’s Fair, the second of which took place in Paris that same year.

Gustave Eiffel’s first paid job was as secretary to Charles Nepveu who was a railway engineer. Nepveu’s business went bankrupt shortly afterward but some parts of it were acquired by other companies and as Nepveu became managing director of two factories in Paris, he gave Eiffel the job of heading up his research department. Nepveu won a contract to design and build a railway bridge over the river Garonne and Gustave Eiffel eventually took over the project when Nepveu resigned in 1860. As the project was completed on time, Eiffel started to make a name for himself and started to win promotions within the company, but unfortunately, it went into decline and Eiffel resigned in 1865.

He set himself up as an independent engineer and won a number of important contracts including the construction of two railway stations and a number of locomotives for the Egyptian government. He also worked on the iron work for the exhibition hall which was to be used for the 1867 Exposition Universelle. Gustave Eiffel’s work led to him learning a lot about the properties of cast iron.

He continued working on lucrative projects, some overseas and some in France, including two viaducts which were used on the line to Bordeaux from Lyon. One of his overseas contracts was for prefabricated sections of a building which was shipped over to Chile and became the Church of San Marcos in Arica.

Gustave Eiffel entered into a partnership in 1868 with Theophile Seyrig forming a company with him called Eiffel et Cie. The company worked on more lucrative and important contracts in the railway industry, including terminal buildings and bridges and in 1878 Gustave’s reputation was firmly established at that year’s Exposition Universelle as he was responsible for the construction of several buildings at the exposition as well as exhibiting models of work that he and his company had completed in the past.

The following year, Gustave Eiffel’s partnership with Seyrig came to an end and Eiffel renamed the company Compagnie des, Etablissements Eiffel. The company worked on a number of bridges over the next couple of years and continued to further establish Eiffel’s name in the field. It was during this time that he started to work with some of the people who would be involved in the Eiffel Tower project.

In 1881, Gustave Eiffel became involved in the construction of his first World renowned tourist attraction when he was contacted by Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty.