Ferris Wheel Design

Factual Questions
1

Anyone know where I can find a design or blueprints for a ferris wheel?

In my engineering design class, we are supposed to design and draw a ferris wheel. I’m not wanting to cheat or asking y’all to help me cheat - the professor suggested that we look online for designs of ferris wheels to help us get started. However, just my googlefu hasn’t really helped me much.

If anyone knows anything about ferris wheels and can point me in a direction where I can find out more about their design so I can get some ideas for my project, I’d really appreciate it. (And just to repeat, this is not cheating, our professor suggested we look online for ferris wheel designs to get ideas for when we start.)

2

Begin HERE, with a history of the first Ferris Wheel, & just who Ferris was, for that matter.

Note the links, lower on the page.

The first Ferris Wheel cars were the size of railroad passenger cars!

3

Here is a page with links to all the patents on ferris wheel designs registered with the US Patent Office. Many of them have design details.

4

The fraternity I joined in college was on the smallish side as a national organization, and suffered in “famous alumni” comparisons with other houses. We boasted only two famous names that I ever heard, and for one of them, we had to explain that he was the guy who invented the Ferris wheel.

5

I think it qualifies as a Ferris wheel, though it doesn’t cal itself that: the London Eye.

The design is unusual in two ways: the wheel never stops turning, so you have get on an off a moving car; and it’s asymmetrical, so that it’s held in place ply some guy ropes that stop it falling into the Thames River.

6

…but certainly not unique, since the ferris wheel on Chicago’s Navy Pier is the same - slow, but steady. Hop on and hop off while it’s in motion.

And, of course, the first ferris wheel was in Chicago, too, at the Columbian exposition in 1893. Carry on.

7

You went to RPI, right? Or just a frat chapter from another school? Anyhoo, Ferris was an alumnus of RPI, a great school mostly unknown except to hockey fans and engineers, alas.

8

This one might be a good one to start with: http://boortz.com/more/funny/redneck_pics_ferriswheel.html

9

No, not RPI – another chapter. But out of all the chapters, I only ever heard of those two famous alums.

10

Thank you for the links Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor, Fear Itself, and Giles. This will really help us to get started on our project, and not have to just sit staring blankly at each other saying, “so, what do you think we should do?”

And GaryM, that link was awesome. I do go to Texas A&M, so maybe I can get some fellow hick engineering students to build that for fun sometime. Everyone would think we were so cool.

11

Please tell me the other name you recognized was Walter Cronkite. And, yeah, I was in the same fraternity, the RPI chapter, as a matter of fact.