
A late entrant to the festival, the lonely, torch-bearing limb wasn’t included in the official guide. Few knew that it was destined to become part of an even bigger statue, meant to be a gift from France to America. Instead, fairgoers simply saw the sculpture as the best way to catch a glimpse of the surrounding counties. They flocked to climb up the arm and stand on the torch’s balcony, forking over 50 cents apiece for the experience. In the space where the statue’s giant elbow should have been, a sculptor stood anxiously, hustling photos and scrap metal from his makeshift souvenir stand. If he had any chance of completing his masterpiece, he’d need all the extra cash he could get.
How War Led to Lady Liberty
The story of the statue begins with the American Civil War. When fighting broke out in 1861, the rest of the world watched with rapt attention: Could the grand experiment in democracy survive? The United States had been an inspiration to the French, who were locked in a cycle of extremism, swinging between bloody democratic revolutions and imperial autocracy. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, the French were crushed. More than 40,000 grieving citizens contributed to a fund to award Lincoln’s widow a gold medal.
It was in this climate, in the summer of 1865, that a group of prominent Frenchmen were discussing politics at a dinner party given by Edouard René de Laboulaye, a prominent historian and law professor. France was still under the thumb of Napoleon III, but when Laboulaye looked to America, he was inspired by "a people intoxicated with hope." He proposed that France give America a monument to liberty and independence in honor of her upcoming centennial. After all, tens of thousands of Frenchmen had just contributed to a medal for Mary Todd Lincoln-how much harder could it be to pony up for a statue?
Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, an up-and-coming sculptor, was excited by the idea. As his mind raced, he pictured the colossi of Egypt, the twin 60-foot, 720-ton sandstone statues of seated pharaohs. Bartholdi wanted his monument to be just as inspiring, and his sketches leaned on the popular imagery of the time-broken chains, upheld torches, crowns meant to represent the rising sun. But Bartholdi also wanted to break from French tradition. Instead of depicting liberty as a half-naked barricade stormer, the artist’s Neoclassical goddess would look staid and calm. Bartholdi didn’t want "Liberty Enlightening the World" to be just a tribute to American freedom. The statue had to send a pointed message to France that democracy works. It didn’t take long for Bartholdi to perfect his vision for the sculpture. Getting the statue actually built, however, was another matter.
Crowdfunding a Statue
Given the statue's message, backing from the French government seemed unlikely. That meant all the funds—originally estimated at 400,000 francs (more than $2 million today)—had to come from the French people. Laboulaye had an idea: What if he and Bartholdi pitched the project as a joint venture between the two countries? As a show of their shared friendship, France could provide the statue and America the pedestal.
Bartholdi was tasked with convincing Americans to join in. In June 1871, he packed up a small clay model of the statue and set sail across the Atlantic. The sculptor, who spoke almost no English, knew he’d been charged with a difficult job but didn’t realize just how difficult it would be. Most Americans he contacted couldn’t grasp why their country would want a giant torch-wielding monument, much less why they’d help pay for it. After an exhausting four-month tour, Bartholdi returned to France, no closer to financing the pedestal.
Thankfully, fundraising there was proceeding at a better pace, thanks to a national lottery and image-licensing deals. Companies lined up to plaster Lady Liberty’s image on everything from "nerve tonics" to cigars, and they were willing to pay for it. As funds trickled in, Bartholdi began work on the torch and arm. In 1876, he sent the pieces to the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, hoping that it would motivate Americans to open their wallets. Finally, his efforts were beginning to pay off.
That same year, a group called the American Committee assembled to boost the fundraising-and an inter-city competition heated up. Bartholdi and his supporters had hinted to New York, the statue’s promised location, that Lady Liberty would be just as welcome in Philadelphia should New Yorkers fail to do their part. In October, The New York Times fired back with an outraged editorial, accusing Philadelphians of setting their "piratical hearts" on "other people’s lighthouses."
Still, there was no denying that the pedestal would be expensive. Building the base alone would cost $250,000, and Americans couldn’t justify spending that much on a "Frenchy and fanciful" statue. If it was a gift, why didn’t France just throw in the pedestal too? The American Committee and other supporters refused to give up. They appealed to everyone from schoolchildren to Civil War veterans. President Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt chimed in with support. But it took the curmudgeonly owner of theNew York World newspaper to finish the job.
"We must raise the money!" Joseph Pulitzer boomed in an editorial, announcing that his paper would run a subscription campaign to raise the $100,000. Within five months, 120,000 people responded to his appeal. Some donated as much as $2,500; most contributed what they could, often less than a dollar. By August 11, 1885, the pedestal campaign had reached its goal. With the funding under control, there was an even bigger challenge to surmount: No one had ever attempted to build a statue so large.
Building Lady Liberty
The description of how Lady Liberty was built reads like a word problem. Bartholdi’s workmen started by creating a 4-foot model. Then they doubled the size. Then they quadrupled it to create a 38-foot-tall plaster model. The workmen then broke down the structure into 300 sections, taking each piece and enlarging it to precisely four times its size. The result? A full-scale model of the final statue-in pieces! Next, the workmen used the pieces to create a mold using either wood or malleable lead sheets depending on the shape; and finally, they hammered the copper sheets against the shape. Though the finished statue is solid, each one of the 310 copper sheets that make up her skin is incredibly thin: the width of just two pennies stuck together.
But Bartholdi still needed help with the structure, so he recruited another famous Frenchman, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. At the time, Eiffel was known simply as a bridge engineer; ground wouldn’t be broken on the tower that bears his name for another decade. But he had a reputation for innovation. Eiffel started by creating a flexible iron skeleton. The frame had enough give for the copper to expand in the sun’s heat-otherwise the statue’s skin would buckle and crack. He also used his knowledge of the pressures on bridges and viaducts to great effect, ensuring that the structure would bend with the wind, thanks to a framework of trussed iron pylons off a central pillar. In fact, Eiffel’s design for the structure anticipated the principles that would later make the great 20th-century skyscrapers possible.
For his part, Eiffel wasn’t impressed by his own genius, and he rarely talked about the statue. When he did, it was mostly about the structure: "The work has well resisted the formidable storms that have assailed it."
Fashionably Late
The Statue of Liberty was nearly a decade late to her own party. By the time she was completed in July 1884, Bartholdi had spent 19 years on the project. Laboulaye had died the year before. For half a year, Liberty stood completely assembled in Paris’s 17th arrondissement, waiting to catch a ride to America. When she finally did, she was disassembled into 350 pieces and packed in 214 boxes.
It took 26 days on a frigate to reach Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor, her new home. The pedestal wasn’t completed until April 1886. It took another four months to reassemble her skeleton and rivet on Lady Liberty’s pre-patina skin, which was still a deep, ruddy brown. And because the pedestal was so small, no scaffolding could be erected around her! Workers dangled from ropes latched to the framework, buffeted by the harbor winds.
On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was finally ready. New York held its first-ever ticker tape parade for her unveiling. And while hundreds of thousands cheered from Manhattan, only 2,000 people were on the island when she was finally opened to the public-a "tidy, quiet crowd," an officer on duty told The New York Times.
Since then, the now pastel-green goddess has risen above New York Harbor, her torch welcoming the "huddled masses" to America. The world knows her as the everlasting symbol of justice, opportunity, and freedom against tyranny. And though fewer are aware of it, she is also the symbol of France’s own hopes for democracy, an example of the impressive fundraising power of two countries and, above all, a reminder of the worst gift-giving etiquette in recorded history.
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The article above, written by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2013 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!
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Comments (9)
See "She Was Never About Those Huddled Masses," by Roberto Suro, founding director of the Pew Hispanic Center (and now director of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC) in the WaPo at Independence Day, 2009: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070201737_pf.html
The statue is not, in any way, an "argument" in favor of immigration, but a lot of ignorant people think it is.
The microprocessor was developed in 1968; early that year the "Star Trek" episode "The Ultimate Computer" aired, featuring the Mark 7, a supercomputer the size of a small steamer trunk that apparently could be rolled about by hand. Quite a bit smaller and more manageable than a Cray, which was the Rolls Royce of supercomputers into the late 1980s at least. (I imagine they're smaller now, but I haven't checked.) So the idea of computers becoming smaller was certainly in place by then. How much smaller, though, was harder to predict, since microcircuitry engraving techniques have improved since then, rendering microprocessors even smaller.
One thing I find fascinating (the Spock reference was unintentional) is that I have not yet read or heard of a science-fiction story from before the late 1980s that makes any mention of an Internet or World-Wide Web. The Internet has been around since the 1960s, when computers were still the domain of scientists and the military. (I still remember, in the late 1970s, my Dad having a bulky, monitor-less computer terminal delivered to our house from work after he broke his knees. He took our kitchen phone off the hook, stuck it onto two rubber cups sticking out of the terminal, and it communicated with another computer over the telephone lines --- the Internet!) It wasn't until after PCs and Macs entered the home that the Internet and the Web entered science-fiction. A "futuristic" communication system that has actually become part of our lives, and it managed to avoid mention in visions of the future until it was already here and "commonplace." Whenever a fellow sci-fi writer gripes about trying to write about the future and make accurate predictions, I cite this example and tell him or her not to worry.
If anyone knows of a sci-fi story from before the late 1980s that DOES mention the Internet or Web, even by a different name, I'd love to hear about it. And if anyone finds such a story from before the 1960s, I'd REALLY love to hear about it!
Wikipedia has a neat list of fictional computers mentioned science-fiction novels.
While we're at it, check out Wikipedia's list of failed predictions.
I read it in high school (I think). It had this guy who went around writing "macrophages" to do damage to the world wide computer network. Obviously a hacker writing viruses to attack the web.
Never heard of such a thing!
His terms were a little off, but pretty prophetic. "Information tanks", not servers. "Logics", not personal computers.
You can find a one page description here:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1270464
The story itself is freely available on the web at several sites, including Baen Book's Free Library at Baen.com
Ed Becerra
I also read one time that no-one had predicted mobile phones in science fiction. That seems unlikely as well. The concept of using telephones that are portable must have occurred to writers at the dawning of radio. It seems inconceivable that no-one envisaged that kind of technology.