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Tower

A tower is a high structure, usually man-made. (Though the sea can erode the land and make a tower or pillar.)

The Eiffel Tower.
Larger version

Purposes of the large height (a tower may have multiple purposes):

being impressive and beautiful
saving surface area
for the view
- for tourism
- for guiding: traffic control tower, in particular at an airport
- for security against coming in or getting out: a watch tower at a prison, concentration camp, fortress/castle, border/defensive wall; in some of these cases also to fire from;
- for watching out for fire, especially in a forest: fire tower;
for spreading light: light tower, lighthouse
for spreading sound: church tower with church bells, minaret of a mosque
antenna tower
for use of the gravity: water tower
as part of a suspension bridge or cable-stayed bridge
for supporting power and signal cables
in a swimming pool for jumping from a height
for fun of climbing in it, for example on a children's playground
the tower of a high slide, for supporting it and with stairs for reaching the starting point
to gain access for maintenance or cleaning, e.g. scaffold tower
for attacking a walled city: siege tower
to reach heaven (legendary Tower of Babel)
for some unknown reason, skyscrapers aren't thought of as towers.

A tower wagon is a mobile tower for construction work, firefighting, rescue work, window cleaning, filming, etc.

Referenced By

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Tower".