George Washington Gale Ferris Jr

What do you mean, who is he? The surname should be your chief clue. The Illinois-born civil engineer gave the world the Ferris Wheel, and got next to nothing for one of the most recognisable inventions in human history.

His inspiration reputedly came from a large water wheel near his family ranch where he grew up in Nevada. Born in 1859, he left home in 1875, for military college, later studying engineering in NYC, graduating in 1880.

Starting his career building bridges, tunnels, etc, he foresaw an increase in the use of structural steel, and founded his own civil engineering firm in Pittsburgh to take advantage of this, eventually opening offices in both NYC and Chicago.

In 1891 he was invited to attend an engineers' banquet in Chicago, the city just selected to host the World's Columbian Exposition - the Chicago world's fair of 1893. Daniel H. Burnham, director of works for the fair, challenged the engineers to produce a structure of some sort rivaling the Eiffel Tower, the superstar of the 1889 Paris International Exposition. The fair's planners had received many ideas for how to top Alexandre-Gustave's tower, including an offer by the Alexandre-Gustave to build a bigger one himself which really upset the American engineers. They wanted anything built to be the result of American Genius.

Ferris's started to think about the challenge and came up with several ideas, all of them apparently round in shape. Later, he told a reporter: "We used to have a Saturday afternoon club, chiefly engineers at the World's Fair. It was at one of those dinners, down in a Chicago chop house, that I hit on the idea. I remember remarking that I would build a wheel, a monster. I got some paper and began sketching it out. I fixed the size, determined the construction, the number of cars we would run, the number of people it would hold, what we would charge, the plan of stopping six times in the first revolution and loading, and ten making a complete turn. In short, before the dinner was over, I had sketched out almost the entire detail and my plan never varied an item from that day."

Basically, Ferris had rekindled an idea that had been in the back of his mind since childhood, converting the Carson River water wheel into a huge wheel.

Ferris spent $25000 of his own money on plans and specifications, trying to convince people it would work. Both fellow engineers and the fair's organisers were dubious, feeling that the stresses were too great, it would collapse. They gave the go ahead in the summer of 1892, but quickly changed their minds, before finally accepting the idea in November 1892, providing he could raise the money himself.

Due to all of the approval delays, lack of government funding etc, he had to complete his design in 22 weeks, by May 1st 1893. With a Chicago winter in the middle of it all, a huge challenge for a known engineering project, never mind that this was a completely new invention. The structure was made in many US cities, and shipped by rail to Chicago for assembly.

Statistics

Circumference - 825'
Axle - 45' long, 82" diameter, weighing 56 tons
Support towers were anchored in 30' of concrete
Height - 144' high at the centre axle
Total height 266'
Weight - 4100 tons
Power - 2x 1000hp engines
Passenger cars - 36 cars at 13' wide
Capacity - 2160 people
Cost - $250,000
Ride cost - 50c
Ride time - 10 minutes for 2 complete circuits
Number of states visible from the top - 3

During the 19 weeks it operated, the Ferris Wheel carried 1,453,611 paying customers. Its gross take was $726,805.50, triple its capital cost, and it was by far the greatest single attraction at the Columbian Exposition.

This link has a lot more detail around what happened to George (died when he was 37), his wheel (dismantled and eventually scrapped)