Gustave Eiffel the city of Dijon, Côte-d'Or, the first child of Catherine-Mélanie (née Moneuse) and Alexandre Bönickhausen (). He was a descendant of Jean-René Bönickhausen, who had emigrated from the German town of Marmagen and settled in Paris at the beginning of the 18th century. The family adopted the name Eiffel as a reference to the Eifel mountains in the region from which they had come. Although the family always used the name Eiffel, Gustave's name was registered at birth as Bonickhausen dit Eiffel, and was not officially changed to Eiffel until 1880. At the time of Gustave's birth his father, an
Eiffel Tower wind forces, and knew that if they were going to build the tallest structure in the world, they had to be sure it could withstand them. In an interview with the newspaper "Le Temps" published on 14 February 1887, Eiffel said: He used graphical methods to determine the strength of the tower and empirical evidence to account for the effects of wind, rather than a mathematical formula. Close examination of the tower reveals a basically exponential shape. All parts of the tower were over-designed to ensure maximum resistance to wind forces. The top half was even assumed to have no