The Space Needle began as a napkin sketch by Edward E. Carlson, chairman of Seattle’s 1962 Century 21 Exposition, who drew a tethered balloon inspired by a broadcast tower in Stuttgart. Architect John Graham Jr., fresh from the revolving restaurant at Hawaii’s Ala Moana Center, added a flying saucer, and Victor Steinbrueck contributed the pinched hourglass tripod, meant to echo Seattle’s isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Names on the table included Big Skookum, Star Tickler, and Top Hat. The private Pentagram Corporation bought a 120 by 120 foot lot holding an old fire station for $75,000 and had less than a year before the fair opened.

The 605 foot tower opened in April 1962 at a cost of $4.5 million, with the last elevator car installed the day before. After the fair it became a civic broadcaster, a radio studio, and in 1974 home to country DJ Bobby Wooten for six months. Later came the 1999 Legacy Light, a $100 million Century Project with a revolving glass floor, flags that track the city’s mood, and pranks that caused real panic.

• A foundation 30 feet deep poured by 467 concrete trucks that weighs 5,850 tons, the same as the tower above it
• A center of gravity five feet off the ground, built for a 9.0 earthquake and winds of 200 miles per hour, with only toilet water sloshing in the 2001 Nisqually quake
• The rotating restaurant turned by a 0.8 kilowatt motor, about 1.1 horsepower
• The Carillon Americana, 538 recorded bells through 44 speakers audible up to 10 miles away
• A 1989 April Fool’s report on KING TV of the needle collapsing that jammed 911 lines