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However, this agreement was not reached until November 28th 1892, giving him less than six months until the fair opened on May 1st 1893. If this weren’t problem enough, the severe Chicago winter would make construction even more difficult.

Despite this, Ferris had enough belief in the project to continue. Using his connections to assemble a group of high profile partners and investors, work began in earnest, with parts being made at various steelworks around Illinois, Ohio, and of course, his own firm in Pittsburgh.

The wheel finally opened on June 21st, almost two months behind schedule. It stood 266ft tall, with an axle that ranked was as the biggest piece of steel ever made, at 45ft long, almost 7 feet thick, and weighing 56 tons. The motion of the wheel was perfect, disproving the engineers who said it could not be done.

The wheel carried 36 fully enclosed cars, each of which carried 60 people, plus a conductor. It had cost Ferris $250,000 to build, and now it was time to see whether enough people were willing to ride to make the investment worthwhile. The name “Ferris Wheel” was chosen partly to reflect it’s status as Chicago’s equivalent to the Eiffel Tower, but also to give the wheel a sense of dignity. Ferris later said that the proposed alternative, “Observation Wheel”, would be too sensationalist, and would make the ride appear tacky.

He was adamant that his creation was to be viewed not as an amusement ride, but as an engineering feat. It was decided that a ride on the Ferris Wheel should consist of two revolutions, one continuous, and one with constant stops for loading and unloading.

Before opening the ride to the public, Ferris invited journalists to ride with him and his wife. Many of them would later describe the ride as terrifying, mainly because of the strong winds that constantly battered the cabins. Whether Ferris approved of his machine being described as scary is unclear, but it failed to deter the public, and at the end of the fair 1,453,611 tickets had been sold which, at 50 cents each, meant the ride had taken almost three times the $250,000 that Ferris had invested, thus making it the most successful feature of the fair.

Any concerns for the structure’s wind resistance were proven unfounded when a hurricane rolled in, damaging many of the fair’s exhibits, but leaving the wheel intact. Indeed, once the wheel had opened, it operated for the remainder of the exhibition without a single breakdown.

Sadly, Ferris’s delight was to be short-lived. He became convinced that the organisers had reneged on the original deal and kept a sizable portion of the ride’s profits. After the exhibition, smaller wheels were built at amusement parks worldwide, but Ferris was not involved in these, and saw very little of the money from them. Much like Eiffel before him, he tried to persuade other cities to build bigger versions of his invention, but failed to generate any interest, due to the fact that investors believed the original wheel to be so famous that building their own version would be seen as simply mimicking Chicago. Continues...