ALS in French, signed “G. Eiffel,” one page both sides, 5 x 8.5, personal letterhead, September 13, 1888. Letter to French aeronaut and scientist Gaston Tissandier. In part (translated): "I am sending you back the article about Garabit. I had to modify an incomplete part relating to placing the key, omitting the truly interesting point about our totalizer apparatus for shifting half arcs, and which was [illegible] when speaking about a 3 centimeters length that we had to chisel, which did not happen—there is also some temperature account that existed only in Boyer’s mind and moreover has no significance. This part of operation was admirably successful and it would be unfortunate that it be presented on another light—in the Nature—I regret that the author of the note did not get my assembly notice and only read Boyer’s very incomplete notes whom has never quite understood all this.” In fine condition.
Eiffel constructed Garabit viaduct, an impressive railway arch bridge spanning the River Truyere, between 1882 and 1884. He had been recommended for the job by Leon Boyer, the engineer in charge of the preliminary survey conducted for the French government. The technical engineering involved was extremely impressive—at the time of its construction, the Garabit viaduct was the highest bridge in the world at over 400 feet above the river—and the bridge remains in use to this day. Pre-certified PSA/DNA.
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