How the world is built · 2 minThe 2.5 million rivets of the Eiffel Tower
Nothing on the Eiffel Tower was welded. About 2.5 million hot rivets hold it together, and the way they tightened themselves is the clever part.
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How great structures are held together, and the small parts that carry the weight. Each piece pairs with a reel on Instagram and goes further than a reel can.
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Every bolt starts as a coil of wire. Six steps from wire to bolt. 🔩
Straighten and cut. Squeeze the head. Roll the thread. Heat treat, coat and stamp.
Three million rivets held the Titanic together. Some of them may have helped sink it. 🚢
What divers found: slag, glassy streaks inside the iron that make it brittle, in the hand-driven iron rivets at the bow and stern. When the hull opened, the...
Three million rivets held the Titanic together. Some of them may have helped sink it. 🚢
Divers' recovered rivets showed slag, glassy streaks that make iron brittle, in the hand-driven iron rivets at the bow and stern. When the hull opened, the s...
Dubai, 2005. The city was still being built.
Every tower since stands on parts no one ever sees. For over 20 years, we've been bringing them in.
Every bolt you've ever held started as a coil of wire. 🔩
The head isn't cut. It's squeezed, cold, in a die. The thread isn't cut either. It's rolled in, so the grain of the steel folds around it. Nothing removed. N...
Before 1800 every workshop cut its own thread.
Before 1800 every workshop cut its own thread. Maudslay's lathe made threads repeatable. In 1841 Whitworth proposed one standard. Today most of the world use...
Imagine losing one nut and not being able to buy another, because nobody else's fits. 🔩
That was the world 200 years ago. Every workshop cut its own thread, angle and spacing. Then Henry Maudslay and Joseph Whitworth pushed for one standard, a f...
Two different metals, water, and a little salt: you've built a small battery.
Two different metals, water, and a little salt: you've built a small battery. In that battery one metal gets eaten.
The Statue of Liberty is a skin of copper only about 2.5 mm thick, hung on an iron skeleton designed by Gustave Eiffel.
Two different metals touching, sea air, salt water creeping in through every seam: that's a battery, and in a battery one side gets eaten. Here it was the iron.
That "8.8" or "10.9" on a bolt head is not a size. It's a strength grade, called the property class.
First number × 100 = tensile strength in MPa. Second number × 10 = yield as a percentage of tensile. So 8.8 is 800 MPa tensile and 640 MPa yield.
Look closely at the Eiffel Tower. Not at the shape, at the joints.
Nothing up there was welded. 18,038 iron parts, 5,300 drawings, and about 2.5 million rivets, driven hot by teams of four.
Most of the world is held together by parts nobody looks at.
A bolt. A screw. A nut. A rivet. They do their job quietly, every day, in every building, bridge, car and chair around you.
Every company says premium quality and fast delivery. So we'll skip that part.
This page is about something most people never look at: the tiny world that holds the big world together. The history, the engineering, the mistakes, and the...
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