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A Century of Photos
OCTOBER 1997
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Click a monthly image below to see a larger preview and text.
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They're fun. They're quirky. And they're full of surprises. Now more than a century of adventures and photographic memories from the magazine's archive are just a click away.
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OCTOBER 1997
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Photograph by Merl La Voy
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Reinventing the Ferris Wheel
A splintery spin on this "pleasure wheel" was a fair bit of fun in Elbasan, Albania, in 1924. Such amusements may have originated from working waterwheels centuries ago; the earliest written description, of a Bulgarian ride, dates from 1620. American engineer George Ferris, Jr., constructed the first modern Ferris wheel for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. His 264-foot-high (80.5-meter-high) marvel was powered by a thousand-horsepower engine and supported 36 wooden cars, each holding 60 people. More than one million visitors paid 50 cents a ride.
This photograph was published in our February 1931 article about Albania, "Europe's Newest Kingdom."
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Click here to view the greatest collection of National Geographic photos ever compiled.
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