What kind of structure is the statue of liberty

The statue rests upon a masonry pedestal. The figure of Libertas is feet 46 m tall, while the entire structure - from the base of the pedestal to the tip of the torch is feet 93 m in height. The statue's index finger is 8 feet long and its nose 4. The pedestal is 89 feet 27 m tall. Bartholdi made his first design of the statue in The following year he and Laboulaye made their first visit to America to discuss the project with influential Americans.

Following his return to France, Bartholdi continued to refine his design but - due to the uncertain political climate - construction didn't begin on the statue until the early s.

In , with interest mounting in the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Laboulaye launched the project by naming the statue "Liberty Enlightening the World" and announcing the formation of its fundraising body, the Franco-American Union. The French would finance the statue while the Americans would pay for the pedestal. These were exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and the World Fair in Paris, although raising funds proved to be more difficult.

By the statue was finished, as were the foundations for the pedestal, but the American Committee for the Statue of Liberty then ran out of funds to build the pedestal. After prefabrication in Paris, the statue was duly shipped in crates to the United States and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then known as Bedloe's Island. The completion of the statue was celebrated by New York's first-ever ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony overseen by US President Grover Cleveland in October Maintained since by the US National Park Service, the statue underwent major repairs and renovation from to , and from to For more about other contemporaneous sculptural projects, see: 19th Century Sculptors.

For more about progressive designers, please see: American Architects c. Bartholdi based his design of a female figure in neoclassical style on Libertas , the Roman goddess of freedom, similar to Thomas Crawford's "Statue of Freedom" which crowns the dome of the United States Capitol Building.

Used one of the first passenger elevators. And, contained one of the first indoor lighting systems ever installed. Significantly, it was the largest use of copper in a single structure at that time. Okay, now without embarrassment, let's take a close look at the First Lady's figure: Height: ' 5" on a ' base Weight: , pounds Eye set: 2' 6" dist.

Gustave Eiffel. Framework: , lbs; 1, puddled-iron bars framework and armature. The plaster model had no other function than to serve the realization of wooden template, to be completely identical. This part was rather long to do and used a lot of wood. The carpenters were working forms until the template is considered sufficiently close to the model by Bartholdi.

It was a complicated carpentry work presenting difficulties similar to those encountered in the study of foundry molds. Like these, the templates must be so constituted that can be easily detached from the model. Then you can make the body, ie remove the copper sheets that will be stamped. To the template was used wooden boards laid in field square. Then they bind them with other boards, as would shelves in a rectangular cabinet.

Finally we added other boards transversely in roughly positioning the close of each other depending on the desired accuracy for the room to pound. The boards were advancing more or less, highlighting shape as contours. These templates were larger or smaller, depending on the difficulty of the work. Sometimes in several assembled for the adjustment of the copper sheets. The workshops were Gaget in central Paris in the late nineteenth century. This photo shows one of the workshops during the hammering copper plates.

It segregates the small thickness of the plates, their sizes, actually quite modest. This is normal, it was necessary that workers can handle quite easily for work. Next comes the copper plates of the shaping phase. These plates are 1 to 3 square meters, we could not find more than 1m40 wide. They are worked into force by hammering on the wooden template. In total the statue weighs 88 tons and consists of plates, of which the first 64 were given by industrial, allowing the construction to begin.

At 88 tons must be added the tons of framework of Eiffel, making a total weight of tons. The plates were brought on the template, shaped by pressure lever or hammered wooden mallet, then returned on huge work tables to be refined before returning to the gauge whether refining was correct.

There were several round trip per plate before it is considered correctly modeled. The finish was made on the tables by beating the little hammer and rammer.

For pieces having shapes very pronounced the copper plates were heated somewhat to facilitate hammering, becoming more malleable. The really hard plates were run past the forge fire and were brazed torch. The template that was used to shape the ear of the statue.

It is the museum of the statue. The penultimate stage was that of verification. Before discarding a plaster model Bartholdi was pouring lead on the plaster. Lead is extremely malleable, it was easy to spread over the entire shape and draw a pattern. This lead model was superimposed on the copper plates that were in perfect fit. Otherwise the plate had to return to hammering to correct the defect, which was rather small but real. Some models were verified mesh wire, just as malleable. The finished part was passing to other workers who had to polish the charge plates and then adjust them to form a single element of the statue.

Here and copper coins were furnished with fittings designed to give them rigidity. These fittings were forged from the form of copper, when it was completely modeled, but were fixed in the amount statue. The foot of the statue being assembled in the workshops and Gaget Gauthier. Throughout the construction of the various elements, they were stored in the yard and workshops Gaget Gauthier.

An essential element of the statue, the famous torch. We see that her neck is very worked and nails are more detailed than it appears today. This photo also shows the workers at work, working alone most of the time pieces. A carelessly left some personalities pose for a picture. Once assembled head occupied a large part of the workshop. It was awesome and did not yet have the seven rays from her head. The workshop was just high enough to assemble, but this detail was anticipated at the time the choice of the construction site.

The assembly of the copper plates had to be done twice. Once during installation "blank", in Paris, a second final in New York. Of course there was no question of damaging the copper plates at the Parisian assembly-disassembly before sending them to the United States.

So we used simple screws for initial assembly, screws that were replaced during the final assembly by rivets 5mm thickness remote from each other of 25 mm. As the pieces are juxtaposed bevel it becomes impossible to distinguish the junctions, even at close range, and the statue appears to have been mounted in one piece. Speaking of juxtaposition, we must know that the plates that making only 2. The edge was still 30cm, making it a lot. Here is the explanatory diagram of the assembly of two copper plates.

The Statue of Liberty is not electrified, in the sense that the electrical system is only used to illuminate the inside of the statue to visitors. But there is still an electrical phenomenon known craftsmen working metals, phenomenon that takes a completely different magnitude in the case of a colossal statue. This is the electric action whose effects are to be feared. The sea wind, which always leads mechanically and independently spray, high proportions of salt water to the vesicular state, is one of the most active agent for the spontaneous creation of electricity from an iron-copper element such than that resulting from the construction of the statue.

Recall that the internal frame is made of iron, the outer covering of copper , so there has contact points that will generate that electricity. This phenomenon can also occur in the presence of rainwater storm charged with nitrates.

One can easily judge the intensity of the currents that take birth in an element of this battery of a relatively large power given its size. To prevent manufacturers have interposed upon final assembly of small plates of copper lined with rags properly coated minium between the copper sheets and iron frames.

This method is successfully used by the Navy for dubbing ships. It could even be used as a generator! Bartholdi faced numerous delays in its construction. In March an accident broke the plaster cast of the hand. The previous year he sorely missed of skilled labor, but to deceive the Americans he send a first element to present to the public, it was the arm holding the torch, and that during the Centennial Exhibition In June the head of the statue was shown the gardens of the Champ de Mars in Paris for the Universal Exhibition, reassuring the population about it.

Another problem was what to make the inside skeletal framework. Bronze and stone were thrown out due to the fact that the statue must be shipped and these materials were too heavy. It was decided that steel would be used due to its light weight in comparison with bronze and stone.

A technique called repousse, which is a technique for creating sculptural forms by hammering sheet metal inside molds was used to make the framework. Lighter than cast metal, repousse was the only method available that would allow for such a monumental work to be shipped overseas.