Today, the Eiffel Tower, which serves an important role in television and radio broadcasts, is considered an architectural wonder. It attracts more visitors than any other paid tourist attraction in the world. The Eiffel Tower was designed by the French engineer and bridge builder Alexandre Gustave Eiffel for the Paris Exposition of 1889. The tower is 300 m high and consists of an open iron framework making it the highest manmade structure in the world at the time.  It was almost not built.  After being awarded the contract to build the tower, Eiffel discovered that the Exposition Committee would only provide about a quarter of the money needed to construct it. Eiffel himself would have to finance the balance. He thought of a deal that would make him a very rich man. He agreed to independently find the people to fund his tower but he wanted to be the only one to control of the tower and he wanted the profits for twenty years. They agreed. To everyone's surprise, including Eiffel, the tower was paid off in the first year.  The deal that Eiffel came up with was probably what saved the tower from destruction. A Committee of Three Hundred was formed and they demanded an end to its building. Many members of the committee said, "They have only put up the framework of this monument, It has no skin." Many sculptors and architects protested , in the name of threatened French art and history, about the useless Eiffel Tower, in the heart of their capital.     It is built of iron, which is an inferior  material, and a single beam  of it is unable to support large stresses. That is why the tower appears over-engineered by today's standards.  Though, from this very weakness, its simple beauty can be found. If you look at the tower, the structure of it sort of copies the biological cellular  structure of a plant. What was the Eiffel Tower originally designed for?
Television and radio broadcasting industries. A Paris Exposition. Promoting the tourism industry. Displaying a special framework structure.