What Is The Statue Of Liberty Made Of ?
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The Statue of Liberty is not only one of the stateliest structures of the US, but also of the world. It is the product of French engineering and design of the nineteenth century and stands tall and proud at the New York Harbor. The Statue was made by Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel and Maurice Koechlin, under the guidance of Frederic Bartholdi.
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The Statue represents a feminine robed figure, upholding a torch with one hand. At first, when the contract of building this iconic statue was in the hands of one Viollet-de-luc, the structure was supposed to have a masonry pier core. Upon his death, when Eiffel and Koechlin took charge of this project, they decided to make it an iron truss structure. To prevent tensile forces from cracking up the statute in due course, the structure was not made completely rigid. It was given an armature, which is a framework made out of metal, that ends in something called the “saddles” which is really a mesh made out of metal straps. These saddles are riveted to the skin, enabling firm support to the structure.
Now another issue needed to be addressed by the engineers. This was the probability of galvanic corrosion between the two primary metals- copper and iron. To solve this, the skin of the statue was insulated with shellac and asbestos. Now, Bartholdi had to implement different technique for assembling the whole structure as the core changed from masonry to metal framework. For this, he had to make the whole structure in France and then ship the dismantled body to USA, where it was reassembled in Bedloe’s Island and set up in New York Harbor.
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