This is the memory palace, I'm Nate de Mayo.

The French had nailed it.

The world loved World's Fair,

in the exposition universe cell in Paris in 1889, just killed.

The exhibits in the grounds were unparalleled and impeccable.

And at the center of it all was this audacious steel structure

that managed to be imposing and elegant

and the tallest thing on earth in unmistakably French, all at once.

Paris had the Eiffel Tower,

and the men planning the next fair, the Colombian exposition in Chicago,

just a couple of years away.

They did something that good,

something Eiffel Tower good.

And that wasn't easy to find.

The proposals ran from the ridiculous,

like a structure that would soar more than 2,000 feet above the land of Lincoln,

made entirely of stack logs in top of the replica of Abe's boyhood home.

To the extra ridiculous,

something so tall that visitors would take an elevator to the top,

and then sit in the slide that would drop them off in New York or San Francisco.

The fair's organizers were in a panic.

They demanded that America's designers and engineers step up.

...