Light at Solstice 2020

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Today in Paris, the sun rises at 8:40 and sets at 16:55. That’s a day with just over 8 hours of light. In Stockholm that will be diminished to 6 hours while in Murmansk the sun will be down all day. Today is Winter Solstice, which makes it the shortest day of the year.

So what we need today is light. That brings us back to Paris, City of Light. Ever drove there with your beloved four-wheeler? That can be either challenging or great fun. But imagine driving across the actual Eifel tower at a height of 103 metres on the second floor! We were flabbergasted when we first saw this image of that most famous of Parisian structures with cars driving over a ramp right across it. Was it real? No, it wasn’t – and presumably for the better, too. But the plan to build an access ramp for the second floor was, in fact, a serious one back in 1936.

The image dates back to that year when engineer André Basdevant was the man responsible. Basdevant was considered either a genius or an impostor, depending on your source. And although his plan has been proved to be a pipe dream, it was the same Monsieur Basdevant who came up later with plans to make a rail / car tunnel between France and the UK also. That must have been considered as totally unrealistic by many at the time, too. As you know it took until 1994 before light was actually seen at the end of the Channel Tunnel…

Words by Jeroen Booij.

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