Ferris wheel

[1] The tallest Ferris wheel is the 250-metre (820 ft) Ain Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which opened in October 2021.

[4] Design variation includes single (cantilevered) or twin sided support for the wheel and whether the cars or capsules are oriented upright by gravity or by electric motors.

"Pleasure wheels", whose passengers rode in chairs suspended from large wooden rings turned by strong men, may have originated in 17th-century Bulgaria.

[1][5] The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608–1667[6] describes and illustrates "severall Sorts of Swinginge used in their Publique rejoyceings att their Feast of Biram" on 17 May 1620 at Philippopolis (now Plovdiv) in the Ottoman Balkans.

[5] Among means "lesse dangerous and troublesome" was one: like a Craine wheele att Customhowse Key and turned in that Manner, whereon Children sitt on little seats hunge round about in severall parts thereof, And though it turne right upp and downe, and that the Children are sometymes on the upper part of the wheele, and sometymes on the lower, yett they alwaies sitt upright.Five years earlier, in 1615, Pietro Della Valle, a Roman traveller who sent letters from Constantinople, Persia, and India, attended a Ramadan festival in Constantinople.

But the wheel turned round so rapidly that a Greek who was sitting near me couldn't bear it any longer, and shouted out "soni!

)Similar wheels also appeared in England in the 17th century, and subsequently elsewhere around the world, including India, Romania, and Siberia.

[5] A Frenchman, Antonio Manguino, introduced the idea to America in 1848, when he constructed a wooden pleasure wheel to attract visitors to his start-up fair in Walton Spring, Georgia.

[11][4][12][13] With a height of 80.4 metres (264 ft), it was the tallest attraction at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, where it opened to the public on June 21, 1893.

William D. Boyce, then a local resident, filed a Circuit Court action against the owners of the wheel to have it removed, but without success.

It operated there from October 1895 until 1903, when it was again dismantled, then transported by rail to St. Louis for the 1904 World's Fair and finally destroyed by controlled demolition using dynamite on May 11, 1906.

Erected in 1897 in the Wurstelprater section of Prater public park in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna, Austria, to celebrate Emperor Franz Josef I's Golden Jubilee, it has a height of 64.75 metres (212 ft)[15] and originally had 30 passenger cars.

[16] Following the demolition of the 96-metre (315 ft) Grande Roue de Paris in 1920,[4][17] the Riesenrad became the world's tallest extant Ferris wheel.

Still in operation today, it is one of Vienna's most popular tourist attractions, and over the years has featured in numerous films (including Madame Solange d`Atalide (1914),[16] Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), The Third Man (1949), The Living Daylights (1987), Before Sunrise (1995) and novels.

Following the huge success of the 135-metre (443 ft) London Eye since it opened in 2000, giant Ferris wheels have been proposed for many other cities; however, a large number of these projects have stalled or failed.

[50] Incomplete, delayed, stalled, cancelled, failed, or abandoned proposals: Nippon Moon, described as a "giant observation wheel" by its designers,[112] was reported in September 2013 to be "currently in development".

Commissioned by Ferris Wheel Investment Co., Ltd., and designed by UNStudio in collaboration with Arup, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Experientia, it was expected to have 32 individually themed capsules and take 40 minutes to rotate once.

[114] An earlier proposal for a 250-metre (820 ft) structure, the Shanghai Kiss, with capsules ascending and descending a pair of towers which met at their peaks instead of a wheel, was deemed too expensive at £100m.

[139] The first centreless wheel in North America opened in January 2019 at the indoor Méga Parc in Quebec City, Canada.

Larger transportable wheels are designed to be repeatedly dismantled and rebuilt, some using water ballast instead of the permanent foundations of their fixed counterparts.

Larger examples include the original Ferris Wheel, which operated at two sites in Chicago, Illinois, and a third in St. Louis, Missouri; Technocosmos/Technostar, which moved to Expoland, Osaka, after Expo '85, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, for which it was built, ended; and Cosmo Clock 21, which added 5 metres (16 ft) onto its original 107.5-metre (353 ft) height when erected for the second time at Minato Mirai 21, Yokohama, in 1999.

[148] Bussink R60 wheels have operated in Australia (Brisbane), Canada (Niagara Falls), France (Paris), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur & Malacca), México (Puebla), UK (Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield), US (Atlanta, Myrtle Beach), and elsewhere.

[169] Swiss broker Intamin marketed a similar series of double wheels manufactured by Waagner-Biro, comprising a vertical column supporting a straight cantilever arm, with each end of the cantilever arm ending in a spoked Ferris wheel.

At the same time, the other wheels remained raised and continued to rotate in a near-vertical plane at considerable height.

[176] The Santa Clara ride, renamed Triple Wheel in post-Marriott years, closed on September 1, 1997.

[181] Allan Herschell Company (merged with Chance Rides in 1970)[185] Chance Morgan/Chance Rides/Chance Wheels/Chance American Wheels[188][189] Great Wheel Corporation[194] (merged with World Tourist Attractions in 2009 to form Great City Attractions)[195] Intamin/Waagner-Biro[196] (Rides brokered by Intamin—manufactured by Waagner-Biro)[197]