An amusement park ride invented more than one hundred years ago is becoming popular again. Cities all over the world are building new kinds of Ferris wheels.

Ferris wheels are large circles that extend high into the air. People sit or stand in small boxes attached to the structure and are lifted into the air and back down to Earth. The first real Ferris wheel was built in eighteen ninety-three for the world's fair called the Colombian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France had been built for the Centennial Exposition in eighteen eighty-nine. Officials in Chicago wanted an exciting new structure that would interest large numbers of people as well.

American bridge builder and engineer George Washington Gale Ferris had the answer. He proposed a seventy-six meter high "observation wheel" for the fair. Some people said it could not be done. They said it was too big and too dangerous to lift people so high that they could be threatened by blowing wind.

Mister Ferris agreed to build the wheel with his own and other private money. His proposal was approved. His wheel operated for the first time at the fair in Chicago. It could carry more than one thousand four hundred riders. Each rider paid fifty cents to ride around the full circle two times for ten minutes.

Reports said more than one million people rode that first Ferris wheel in the nineteen weeks it operated at the fair. People started calling it after the name of its inventor.

Today, Ferris wheels can be found in just about every amusement park in the United States and in other countries. They are usually very safe. But accidents do happen.

Next year, China is to open two new Ferris wheels. The Tianjin Eye will stand on a bridge where cars will pass around it. And the Great Beijing Wheel will be more than two hundred meters high. The wheels are to start turning in time for the two thousand eight Summer Olympic Games.