The original Ferris wheel was first displayed at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Its inventor was George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., a Pittsburgh-based bridge-builder. – It stood 265 feet tall. – One revolution took 10 minutes. – Each of the 36 seating compartments could carry 60 people for a maximum total of 2,160 passengers. – The wheel weighed just over 2 million pounds. – On November 22, 1893, three years after his invention debuted, Ferris Jr. died of tuberculosis.
