Sixth Grade
Worksheets
The Big Wheel
Ferris Wheel Day
Reading Comprehension for February 14
If you go to a fair or an amusement park, the sheer variety of rides can make your head spin and your stomach queasy. It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, the carousel was considered a wild ride. It was topped by the original giant, the Ferris wheel.
George Ferris was an engineer by trade. He'd done some work for the railroads and then constructed the steel framework for bridges in Pittsburgh. He saw that structural steel was becoming a popular building material and set up a company to inspect and test the material.
In 1891, he attended a banquet in Chicago, Illinois, along with other engineers from around the country. The city had been chosen to host the World's Fair in 1893. The director of the fair's construction hoped to get some kind of engineering marvel to make people want to come to the fair. The Eiffel Tower had done that for the Paris International Exposition. Until Ferris came along, none of the proposals made by other engineers were what he wanted. They wanted to build towers like Eiffel's, but the director wanted something original.
