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Description:
Beautifully engraved RARE certificate from the Ferris Wheel Company issued in 1895. This historic document has an ornate border around it with the company's name in the top center section of the certificate and an embossed corporate seal with an incorporation date of 1892. The capital stock authorized was $600,000 and each share sold for $100 each. This certificate was issued to Marian G. Fish for 100 shares which cost a tidy sum of $10,000. This item has the hand signatures of the Company’s President ( Robert W. ? ) and Secretary ( Judge William A. Vincent ). This is the first time we have seen this certificate. This item has been taped on the top portion of the folds as can be seen in the scan, otherwise in fine condition.
Photo of the Ferris Wheel at the World Columbian Exposition He used his personal credit to begin placing orders for steel and formed a joint stock company, but the sale of shares went slowly until he attracted several prominent investors, including railway magnate Andrew Onderdonk and Judge William Vincent Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition celebrated the 400th anniversary of the "Discovery of America". The United States intended to show the world that it had become a world class nation. George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., a bridge and tunnel engineer and owner of a Pittsburgh firm, designed his Wheel in response to a challenge posed by Daniel H. Burnham, chief of construction for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The fair needed a monumental accomplishment in engineering to top Eiffel’s tower, built for the 1889 Paris Exposition. Proposals for bigger towers had rolled in, as well as plans for a 450 foot tall statue of “Freedom Raising the World,” for a “Water Palace” for an “underground palace” “for a Tower of Babel forty stories high, with a different language spoken on each floor, for an aerial island supported by six giant hot-air balloons, for a replica of Dante’s Hell, and for a range of manmade mountains”. Ferris’s proposal finally won out, but with great reluctance on the part of the planning board, who thought fairgoers would disdain risking their lives to be elevated 264 feet above the earth by a flimsy-looking machine. As it turns out, as a wildly popular attraction, the Wheel drew desiring crowds to the Exposition and probably accomplished the fair’s thin profit margin. The Ferris Wheel was 264 feet tall, with 36 cars, each weighing 13 tons and capable of carrying 40 seated and 20 standing passengers, 2160 people fully loaded. The machine was powered by a 1,000 horse power steam engine, with an identical engine on the grounds in case the other failed. The Wheel’s axle alone weighed 45 tons. The Wheel itself, including its cars, weighed nearly 1,100 tons, and therefore needed something substantial to hold it up. Its axis supported on two skeleton iron towers, pyramidal in form, one at each end of it. Including the towers and engines, the entire machine weighed 2,200 tons and cost $363,000 to fabricate. For a fee of fifty cents –– as much as the admission price to the Columbian Exposition and ten times the cost of a carousel ride –– a passenger received two trips around the wheel, amounting to twenty minutes. The first revolution was interrupted by five stops as the Wheel loaded six cars, but the second went without stopping. The loading platforms were designed to allow fresh passengers to enter the cars from one side while those who had just rode exited from the other, maximizing the flow of customers so as to process three rides per hour which, if fully loaded, totaled 6,480 passengers, paying $3,240. The Ferris Wheel was again erected at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition which was also the site of the first Olympics held in the United States. After the Exposition the wheel was scrapped. Judge William Alexander Vincent Address: Office, Rookery Building, room 443. Home (at time of death), 128 Washington road, Lake Forest. Born: January 1, 1857, Wheeling, West Virginia. His father, Dr. John A. Vincent, had been the mayor of Springfield. Education: Ohio Wesleyan and Columbia universities. 1886: Moves to New Mexico as counsel for the Atchison, Topeka and Sant Fe railroad; president of the New Mexico Bar Association. While in New Mexico, receives a Democratic nomination to run for Congress, but declined to run. 1888: Chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme court. 1889: Chief justice of Montana; refuses the office of chief justice of Utah later. Circa 1890: Moves to Chicago and practiced law with former Judge Adams A. Goodrich, Judge Lorin C. Collins, and Clarence S. Darrow. 1893: Serves as the attorney for the company that builds the world's first Ferris wheel for the World's Columbian Exposition. 1897: Serves as lead defense counsel in the first Luetgert trial. Died: March 21, 1919, at his office, of heart disease. Survivors: Sons Charles Ridgeley and Lieut. John Alexander Vincent (serving in France at time of Vincent's death) and daughters Mrs. Lloyd Canby and Mrs. Joseph S. Barker. The Chicago Daily News described Vincent on September 17, 1897: Vincent has shown himself to be a master of fence … has been cool and reserved, yet always alert and at times poignant… Mr. Vincent is a man of striking appearance, being of medium height, but of strong build, his massive head being set on a pair of extraordinarily broad shoulders. He has few mannerisms in addressing the court, his favorite attitude being with his left hand tucked in the armhole of his vest. Occasionally, when emphasizing what he considers an important point, he drops this pose and gesticulates with both hands. His voice is always clear and distinct, although seldom being raised above what would be considered a conversational tone.
| Status: For Sale |
Reference#: ferwheelcom1 |
| Condition:
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Year:
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