300,000 people can’t be wrong
CDG
48˚ 51’ 32” N | 2˚ 17’ 40” E
CDGE10027*
Paris is a city of writers—Victor Hugo, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Voltaire. And writers who visit can’t help but make the city a backdrop for their own work—Dickens, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. More than inspiring, her streets are pages of a story waiting to be picked up, bound, and kept close on your nightstand. It’s also a city of science, with the Sorbonne, the Paris Observatory, and the largest science museum in Europe. Storytelling and innovation come together in the record of Paris’ seven World Fairs held between 1855 and 1937. Of a thousand chapters in that story, the Eiffel Tower is just one entry. © Vast Compass, 2025.
Can-do spirit
Thomas Edison and Gustave Eiffel were exemplars of their era.
Edison unlocked the promise of 1,093 patents to improve the human condition, beginning with the successful taming and commercialization of electricity and including the production of ubiquitous and affordable incandescent light. He finished what King Louis XIV began when the Sun King first illuminated Paris in 1667.
Meanwhile, Eiffel inaugurated a new era of construction that let us scrape the sky, reaching heights today more than 5X that of the Great Pyramid in Giza. His engineering gave us not only new ways to build, but he also proved that conviction and perseverance can win the day. Cue Nike’s marketing department and the company’s timeless slogan, ‘Just do it.’.
It's this l’esprit de l'impossible—or, can-do spirit—that motivated Eiffel to advocate for his Tower’s usefulness long after the world’s fair completed its scheduled run. His inner meteorologist had him picking up where Dickens had left off. The English writer was known for his descriptions of weather and accurate observations of the natural world, often using both to metaphorically advance character development or tease out unexpected story arcs. Similarly, the French engineer helped codify the mathematics behind wind and temperature to ensure his Tower could withstand the slings and arrows of Nature’s extremes.
From BCE to the BBC
While they never met, both Dickens and Eiffel were men driven by curiosity with outsize intellects in the heady days of the Scientific Revolution, so it’s no surprise that both were meteorologists on the side, proud members of a long-standing community.
Aristotle was the first Al Roker, if you will, when he published Meteorologica, circa 340 BCE. Which is why starting in the 1570’s the term for those studying the weather was ‘meteorologician’ (‘Meteorologist’ replaced meteorlogian in 1638.). And while ‘weatherman’ was in print as long ago as 1545, the first weatherman to appear onscreen in front of a map via in-vision technology was on the BBC, January 11, 1954. (To push things too far, the first weather app for the iPhone was released in 2007.)
Dickens, the author, and Eiffel, the engineer, studied the skies because they needed to ensure their creations were in sync with the realities of the physical world. Dickens so that his descriptions of how soot fell from smoking chimneys matched what his readers experienced on the streets of London. Eiffel, so that his Tower didn’t topple as many Parisians feared it would.
A beacon for science
From the start Eiffel saw his Tower’s potential as a valuable scientific tool, including in meteorology and studies of the wind. He even imagined that its use in astronomy could help prolong its lifespan beyond the twenty years for which it was initially contracted.
It will be for everyone
an observatory and a laboratory the likes of which
has never before been available to science.
—Gustave Eiffel
Eiffel often described his Tower as, “a beacon for electric lighting", and a facility for conducting wind studies. The engineer-meteorologist envisioned his Tower not just as an architectural feat, but also as a scientific instrument that would serve as a tool for advancing knowledge, particularly in areas like aerodynamics, physics, and astronomy. Photo credit: AlxeyPnferov, iStock.
The birth of postcards, ponies, picnics, and FOMO
Perhaps it’s this combination of the Tower-as-Laboratory that has made its aerie so popular over the decades. From the beginning, its rotating electric beams and radio antennae attracted public interest, as tourists and visitors to the exposition snapped up commemorative ephemera like postcards showing not just the tower in all its glory, but also its crown with transmission signals emanating outward like a glowing diadem, not unlike the Statue of Liberty’s crown which inspired Eiffel to include light as one of the Tower’s bespoke features. But the Tower’s appearance wasn’t limited to just the postcard—she’s also held a steady place of honor on France’s postage since 1936.
Historians record that postcards first appeared in Austria in 1869, and they are documented to appear in France four years later, but with little uptake by the public. However, even before the Exposition Universelle of 1889 opened on May 6, souvenir postcards featuring Gustave Eiffel’s Tower were all the rage for locals wanting to snap up an affordable collectible documenting the phenomenon. Next came 32 million fair attendees, 2 million of whom visited the Tower, with some buying one of five designs on 300,000 cartes postale featuring engravings by Léon Charles Libonis. In time, photographic versions became the standard. All intended to shared, if only just to say, “Wish you were here.”
Concessions like the commemorative postcard shown above helped the Tower become financially solvent and turn a profit after just one year. Today it’s the most visited monument in the world that charges an entrance fee (about $38, which includes elevator lifts to the summit for 7 million annual visitors).
300,000 postcards with etchings by Léon Charles Libonis were sold exclusively at the Tower. Five designs captured the Iron Lady with plenty of room for visitors to ‘write home’ and share the Exposition experience with friends and family. In an era when most of us never ventured more than 50 miles from where we were born, FOMO had a whole different meaning.
A stereo postcard of the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadéro, published in 1898. Photo credit: U.S. Library of Congress.
The lady of la poste
The Eiffel Tower has been popular as postage from the days of centimes, with its appearance on stamps continuing through the eras of the franc and euro, including a special series themed for the 2024 Olympic Games—Photo credits: DieterMeyrl, iStock; TonyBaggett, iStock; La Poste.
FUN FACT—The U.S. flag didn’t appear on postage until 1957 over concerns that cancellation marks on stamps bearing Old Glory would be seen as unpatriotic.
Postcards and postage with the Tower’s aerie has been a staple for more than 100 years. Since 1908 the Tower has had communications antennae. Image credit: LiliGraphie, iStock.
There are decidedly more transmission installations atop the Tower’s summit today. Photo credit: Creative Commons.
CDGE10031*—Including postcards sales, the Tower generates more than 100 million euros annually. A ride on one its iconic carousel ponies costs €3. For a different perspective of the Tower, Seine river cruises embark from Quai Branly near the Tower’s entrance with a day pass costing €23. Picnics on the Champ-de-Mars are another great way to spend time with the Iron Lady. Provision your porte à manger (food to go) from the outstanding shops on nearby Rue Cler. The street is highly regarded for its markets specializing in fromage, pain, pâtisserie, and vin.
FUN FACTS—From the beginning artists were inspired by the Iron Lady. In 1921 Jean Cocteau set an avant-garde ballet on the Tower, Alanis Morissette’s breakout music video in 1991 was filmed in the Trocadero fountains, and an hommage à Gustave Eiffel featuring strings and percussion by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt premiered in 2010.
Be sure to write
Nearly 140 years later the humble postcard remains a staple souvenir of travelers everywhere. We buy them in part to anchor our memories to a particular place and time, and in part to share with others ‘back home’ who said, “Be sure to write!”. Which impulse is at the root of what today we call ‘fear of missing out’. Somehow, despite SMS texting and all the rest of the apps that connect us, postcard racks still stand tall in every tourist venue the world over. WhatsApp is terrific, but so is a stamp from a land foreign to ours, with smeary ink saying, “No matter how much fun I’m having, I’m thinking of you.”
The world in your hand
Sharing travel experiences is the raison d'être for Vast Compass. The physical artifact. The experience of ‘holding the world in your hand’ is the impetus behind our handcrafted photocards. Words written by hand, in ink, on paper, with postage affixed, simply hold a different meaning. Just ask those 300,000 fairgoers in Paris who wrote home from the fair nearly 150 years ago. They can’t be wrong. Allen and I believe in the value of sharing the world one destination and one story at a time.
Our need for connection is proof that in a world fueled by innovation, tradition still has a role to play. Edison and Eiffel conspired to re-shape our every day, but taking time to pick up a pen to drop a line, vs. leaving a voicemail or sending a text to those we care about the most still has an outsize place in our lives.
Wish you were here, indeed.
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