Unit 3 A healthy life reading课时作业

Ⅰ. 阅读理解

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　A

The Eiffel Tower is one of Europe's most famous buildings. It stands in the Champ de Mars，a park near the River Seine in Paris. It is 300 meters tall and was built by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel for the Paris Universal Exposition in 1889，or "expos" as we now call them，and these "expos" are places where people can see new inventions，new kinds of art，and new kinds of food.

Because the tower was such a tall building，Eiffel wanted to make it easy for people to get to the top. He wanted to use an elevator，which was a very new invention at the time. Eiffel asked Elisha Otis to design an elevator to the first and second platforms of the building. Unfortunately，the French government did not like the first design that Otis showed them，and they would not let him put the elevator in. By early 1889，the first visitors had to climb hundreds of stairs to get on the first and second platforms of the tower.

The Eiffel Tower cost over a million US dollars-a lot of money at that time. People who invested in the building were worried that they would not get their money back. However，in the first year they got much more than their money back. Thousands of tickets were sold to people who wanted to go up and look at the view from the top.

The opening of the Eiffel Tower took place on 10 June 1889. Eiffel himself lived in the tower where he had his own apartment. Many kings and queens visited the tower during the opening and，of course，they visited Eiffel's apartment. Although Eiffel designed the tower for people to visit，it was also used for scientific experiments. Nowadays，the tower gets twice as many visitors as the other very famous building in Paris-the Louver.