“Too fragile,” he said. Ferris was hardly the first to imagine such a wheel. In fact, a carpenter named William Somers was building 50-foot wooden wheels at Asbury Park, Atlantic City and ...

When George W. Ferris constructed the world's first Ferris wheel for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, he started a trend (and in a sense, he also helped usher in the modern ...