The Daily Texarkanian. [volume] (Texarkana, Ark.) 1894-1906, 1894-10-15
THE GREATEST WHEEL.
Now Being Constructed in London to
Out Shine the Ferris.

The largest wheel in the world
not even excepting the famous
Ferris wheel at Chicago is rapidly
approaching completion at West
Kensington. One would hardly sup
pose this to be the case at the pre-
sent time There is as yet no sem
blance of wheel, but merely gil
gantic IRON fabric that be another
Eiffel tower in process of evolution
Eight enormous iron columns slope
up toward each other to the height
of $50 feet or thereabout, ten feet
higher than the level footway of
the tower bridge above the Thames
at high water. Each column rises
from a twenty-five foot cube Of
solid concrete, in which its root are
embedded down in the earth. These
eight columns together constitute
the two buttresses-four to each
buttress-on the top of which the
axis of the wheel will rest. AS
these supports have now attained
their full height, they afford some
criterion of the enormous dimen.
sions of the wheel, whose axis is to
revolve on the top of them, and
whose outside rim will rise Just
about as high again. The Chicago
wheel stands in its heighest point
258 feet above the earth; the Ken
sington wheel will attain to height
of 300 feet, or just about half as
high again as the monument.
Walter Basset, a naval lieuten-
ant on the retired list, the designer
and engineer of the work, computes
that about seven-eighths of it
has been got through and that but
for the great amounts of wet il
May and June it would now all have
been in working order. Every por
ton of the huge structure is com
pleted and e-fourth of the whee
is now on the ground at Kensing
ton and the remainder is ready t.
be brought as fast as this portion
can be pieced together and got GU
of the way, the space within the in
closure at the base of the giant fab
ric being very limited.
The buttresses, as it has been
said, are now complete, and the
next piece of business will be to ad
just the ponderous axle of the
wheel on the top of them and to ad-
ust the end of it in the "blummer
blocks" or bearings in which it will
revolve, and each of which weighs
eleven tons. This is the only seri-
GUS business now remaining to be
done. When it is stated that the
axle weighs 50 tons and is 40 feet
long it will be apparent that the
task of dropping it into position on
the top of columns $50 feet high is
not by any means trifling one.
Even the preparatory arrangements
for it involve a good deal of anxious
work Two temporary wooden
girders, each As feet long and 28
feet high and weighs 7 tons, have
had to be slid up the sloping sides
of the buttresses and reared on top
of them. Over the summit of this
wooden fabric a travelling crane
will be established and the ponder
Gus club" below will be slowly
drawn up and its "anti-friction, I"
white metal ends dropped into
their sockets. 1t will only remain
then to put in the spokcs and fit to-
gether the enormous periphery,
hang on the cars and get up steam
and begin to take the shillings.
The great wheel itself, apart from
the central axis, is to be delt with
in four sections, each quadrant
weighing $50 tons and each in it.
self consisting Of ten subsections
The first quadrant will be built from
the ground and is now attacked on
the spot ready for use as soon as
the axle, which also lies ready, has
been got up aloft. The second,
third and fourth quadrants will be
built from staging 10 feet high and
for hosting the fragments of the
great circular fabric into position
there will be altogether twenty
cranes working simultaneously. AS
this staging has nearly all OF 1t yet
to be erected and the cranes set up,
it must be evident that there are
still busy times ahead; but as the
actual formulation Of thewh eel is
merely the fitting together of pre-
pared steel, and Of course only in.
wolves the petition of what is a very
simple process all the way around,
progress may be very rapid, and it
is contemplated to set up electric
arc lights, and to work in double
shifts, night and day, as soon as
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