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A TEAM EFFORT

It took seven years and the skills of hundreds of people from five countries to make the London Eye a reality

A VIEW FIT FOR A QUEEN

You can see around 40KM (25 miles) from the top as far as Windsor Castle on a clear day

DING! DING!

The London Eye can carry 800 passengers per revolution - equivalent to 11 London red doubled-decker buses

HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION

Each of the 32 capsules weighs 10 tonnes. To put that figure into perspective, it's the same weight as 1,052,631 pound coins!

SLOWLY BUT SURELY

Each rotation takes about 30 minutes, meaning a capsule travels at a stately 26cm per second, or 0.9km (0.6 miles) per hour - twice as fast as a tortoise sprinting; allowing passengers to step on and off without the wheel having to stop

THE ONLY WAY IS UP

The circumference of the wheel is 424m (1.392ft) - meaning that if it were unravelled, it would be 1.75 times longer One Canada Square in Canary Wharf

TONNES OF FUN

The total weight of the wheel and capsules is 2,100 tonnes - or as much as 1,272 London black cabs!

UP, UP AND AWAY

The height of the London Eye is 135m (equivalent to 64 red telephone boxes piled on top of each other) making it the fourth tallest structure in London after the BT Tower, Tower 42 and One Canada Square in Canary Wharf

BLAST OFF

The spindle holds the wheel structure and the hub rotates it around the spindle. At 23 metres tall, the spindle is around the size of a church spire and, together with the hub, weighs in at 330 tonnes: over 20 times heavier than Big Ben