George Ferris Biography

Ferris was born on February 14, 1859, in Galesburg, Illinois, the town founded by his namesake, George Washington Gale. His parents were George Washington Gale Ferris Sr. and Martha Edgerton Hyde.[citation needed] He had an older brother named Frederick Hyde who was born in 1843.[citation needed] In 1864, five years after Ferris was born, his family sold their dairy farm and moved to Nevada. For two years, they lived in Carson Valley.
From 1868 to 1890, his father, George Washington Gale Ferris Sr., owned Sears-Ferris House, at 311 W. Third, Carson City, Nevada. Originally built in about 1863 by Gregory A. Sears, a pioneer Carson City businessman,[2] the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places for Carson City on February 9, 1979.

Ferris Senior was an agriculturalist/horticulturalist, noteworthy in Carson City's development for much of the city's landscaping during the 1870s, and for importing a large number of the trees from the east that were planted throughout the city.[3]
Ferris left Nevada in 1875, to attend the California Military Academy in Oakland, where he graduated in 1876. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, where he was a Charter Member of the local chapter of the Chi Phi Fraternity[4] and a member of the Rensselaer Society of Engineers, in the class of 1881 with a degree in Civil Engineering. He was made a member of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Alumni Hall of Fame in 1998.[5]
Ferris began his career in the railroad industry and was interested in bridge building.[5] He founded a company, G.W.G. Ferris & Co. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to test and inspect metals for railroads and bridge builders.
His house at 1318 Arch Street, Central Northside, was added to the list of City of Pittsburgh Designated Historic Structures on June 28, 2001.

2

Google has begun showing a doodle on its home page in parts of the world where it’s already February 14th. The doodle honors George Ferris, an American engineer famous for creating the original Ferris Wheel for the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition.

February 14th is, of course, Valentine’s Day, which is celebrated in many countries around the world. And what says love like a ride on the Ferris Wheel?

The doodle is interactive, as they often are. You can push the heart button over and over again to match up different animals who appear to be going out on different kinds of dates. This video Simon Rüger sent us shows some of the different match-ups, as well as the animation:

Once you click the search icon in the doodle, you’ll be taken to search results for George Ferris, including Google’s Knowledge Graph panel for him: