A BUSINESSMAN HUMANIST in the middle of the industrial XIXth century.
In his documentary dedicated to GUSTAVE EIFFEL, CHARLES BERLING highlights a personality to JULES VERNE. He redraws with sensitivity the life of a big engineer, father there of the Tower the 120th birthday of which is celebrated this year. He reveals us there a curious and inventive mind, which even imagined a bridge under the English Channel and a plan of underground ten years before its real realisation They discover that after its withdrawal of business in 1893, it devoted thirty last years of the life to research activities scientifi ques, inventing a new type of blower and becoming one of the biggest in the field of aerodynamics. LINK
The film is born in meeting between Virginia COUP RIE-EIFFEL and CHARLES BERLING. This last explains: Across what told itself in the family of Virginia, I heard about GUSTAVE EIFFEL whom I knew badly very. Discovering an extremely exciting life, I thought that it prism family was much more interesting than the look too much made sacred which it is possible to have of it today and that kills all what there is living being and copy in this big destiny .
Having already interpreted the historical characters as JEAN MOULIN or as lately BADINTER, uninterrupted CHARLES BERLING: in my actor's job, when I represent a famous character, I always try to understand the man that he was before being a "Great man" Because what a "Great man" if it is not first a man who had at some point courage and the some boldness. Feeling like passing to realisation since instant, it was for me the ideal occasion to make it .
Alexander Gustave BONICKHAUSEN, says EIFFEL, is born in 1832 in Dijon. Man of the second half of the XIXth century, it is the reflexion of contradictions of its epoch and of his socially conservative bourgeois middle. CHARLES BERLING itemises: It is this political dimension which interested me. France of epoch was divided into two. There was on the one hand bonapartistes and of other one republicans. The young person Gustave exaggerated encircled with a father ancient bonapartiste Офисr, and of a mother, authoritarian and ambitious businesswoman, who ran in Dijon a trade of coal and built up a solid personal destiny.
But decisive influence will be that of his uncle Jean-baptist MOLLERAT, industrialist admitted in chemical painting and especially persuaded republican. CHARLES BERLING resumes: Very quickly and against the opinion of his father, YOUNG PERSON EIFFEL is going to be in a progressive perspective, on the side of his UNCLE MOLLERAT and republicans who understood that the proletariat could not be a simply exploitable mass but that he must be linked to progress. Studying in Paris, he enters the Central School and chooses to specialise in chemistry, in the hope of succeeding his uncle, but a family quarrel compromises this plan. His mother recommends him then to turn to the metallurgy, making possible the career which is known.
Innovative businessman, EIFFEL always tested original technical solutions and enlisted man of the plans of an unpublished ambition. So his engineer's career is thrown in 1858, when is entrusted to him by his employer the realisation of the bridge of Claret. Along 500 metres, this work is then one of the most important constructing in France. His foundations are accomplished thanks to the job of an innovative technology which allows to work underneath the level of the water. The notability acquired on this construction site allows him to get other orders, and to create its firm in 1866.
The achievements of establishments EIFFEL will be various and various: viaducts (Garabit in 1884 or on Douro, in Portugal in 1877), bridges, frameworks or metallic structures (as the dome of the observatory of Nice in 1884 or structure commits the Statue of Freedom in 1886), or even of whole buildings, as the railway station of Pest, in Hungary, in 1875 and of course Eiffel Tower in 1889.
At the same time, GUSTAVE EIFFEL leads a permanent reflexion on useful progress. His problems are simple: how to send in the poor countries of the buildings which are montables by not skilled teams? Thanks to his wonderful instinct, he develops then a very profitable international activity: the conception of " portable knockdown bridges ". Of a very simple assemblage, they will be delivered in spare parts worldwide to in 1940s .
I found extremely interesting by accomplishing this documentary definite CHARLES BERLING to see how a young boss as GUSTAVE EIFFEL, understands very early that they owe, if they want to have results and firm which walks, to make that its employees are happy! Whether they are in even to work well.
And GUSTAVE EIFFEL always tried to find this balance as explains him Virginia COUP RIE-EIFFEL: From the beginning, when he arrives from Dijon and that he is in Claret in the world which he absolutely does not know, he does not lower arms. He has two important qualities: not only he can very well encircle himself but especially he can give value to people with whom he works on an epoch when to work and to make money with the hands was considered as base! . And CHARLES BERLING to add: The job of the man is something very important in all work of GUSTAVE EIFFEL. It is important all the more as we well need these lessons of life in finan i re current crisis and its scandalous abuses. It is really businessman's very nice message that to prove that it is possible to have a career, a strong personal ambition and at the same time to serve the general good. It is for me one of the biggest lessons that this man gave us. It is for it that I wanted to end the film by this sentence of GUSTAVE EIFFEL - whatever is the branch which you chose, in your future life, be applied to develop such a trifling progress it is. You will make a general good Vous en ferez un bien g n ral
- For me, GUSTAVE EIFFEL is really a man of actuality.
Between 1890 and 1892, EIFFEL conceives 3 ambitious plans which will be never accomplished.
The 1st concerns the implementation of an underground railway. It is a question of endowing Paris of a mode of locomotion shod public, following the example of London, Berlin or New York. The 12 km line forms a curl between Madeleine and Lion railway station. It is partly underground, lights in electricity, and partly air, on metallic viaducts conceived in order to limit noise nuisances.
The 2nd plan concerns the plans of a bridge under the English Channel : neither air bridge, or bored tunnel, but a conduit put down on the marine bottom. He has advantage not to bother the shipping, for a controlled cost. However, this plan will not succeed more than rival researches to come into the world.
The 3rd plan is that of an observatory on the White Mount. The astronomer Jules JANSSEN makes the official report which the rarefaction of the atmosphere of the Earth in altitude allows a better study of stars. GUSTAVE EIFFEL, solicited, accepts challenge. But further to the decease of a doctor who accompanied expedition, EIFFEL chooses to leave.
Strong in the success of the Tower, EIFFEL gets involved immediately in the building of the locks of the channel of Panam . But in 1893, a huge financial scandal bursts and draws away the bankruptcy of plan. EIFFEL is condemned in 1st authority. But this judgement is broken by the Supreme court of appeal. EIFFEL, who is more engineer than financier, is harshly attained by the debate which results from it all the more so as anti-German France reproaches him for its Germanic lineage.
At the age of 61, he puts an end to his constructor's career. Nevertheless he continues persevering in showing the utility of " his Tower ". In 1898, he makes instal a laboratory weather forecast in his summit then, in 1901, a permanent transmitter of TSF. But it is the strategical interest of the Tower for the servicemen that saves definitely the monument of dismantling which threatened it.
At the same time he chooses to dedicate himself to the research, in which he is not going to hesitate to excel.
From the middle of 1890s, GUSTAVE EIFFEL begins a new career, so long and prestigious as the previous. Already decisive element of its constructor's activity, the wind constitutes the thread of its scientific researches.
Enticed, CHARLES BERLING adds: What is exciting at GUSTAVE'S EIFFEL'S, it is this desire of not never, NEVER, to drop,
to stop never, to have secret to give objectives and to go until the end. They smell this incredible force which allows him to leave again towards something once again, to create, to invent. And all that for his fellow citizens.
Everything begins around the permanence of the Eiffel Tower where experimental researches on aerodynamics take place. From aerodynamics to the aeronautics, there is only one step. Aviation is born at the end of the XIXth century, and EIFFEL makes construct a blower on the Field of march to test scale-downs of plane and to measure the reactions of different forms under the effect of the wind. Got results are unexpected and of a big practical utility.
In 1912, EIFFEL constructs in Auteuil, street Boileau, a more competitive laboratory which becomes fast one of the biggest in the field of aerodynamics, internationally admitted and that always works today. A blower can cause a 100 km / h wind there and EIFFEL tests all kinds of devices there, working with BREGUET or FARMAN.
From 1914, he contributes to the war effort by studying the fairing of shells and imagines even an apparatus which he describes " high-speed fighter ": it is the plane L.E. (for Laboratory Eiffel). His drawing is original, with wings born at the foot of the airframe, a refined profile and a form in shell. An archetype of the apparatus is constructed and the big constructors adopt immediately the positioning of its wings.
On the January 1st, 1921, the tireless engineer, 89-year-old, gives up the usage of the aerodynamic Laboratory of Auteuil to the State.
His curiosity for various disciplines and his worry of problems in his/her time, guided a strict and innovative job value of which is unanimously admitted.
Portrait accomplished by HERV GIRAUD for COOLTURE - Credits photos CHARLES BERLING Richard AUJARD.
