The Eiffel 200 francs, P159a, honours far more than one tower. Born in Dijon in 1832 and trained at the École Centrale, Gustave Eiffel made his name with railway bridges: his Garabit Viaduct, completed in 1884, is close kin to the Maria Pia Bridge he had thrown across the Douro at Porto.

His firm also built the hidden iron skeleton that holds up the copper skin of the Statue of Liberty, and Eiffel designed the dome of the Nice Observatory, which appears on the front of this note next to the tower's latticework. The design thus reads almost like a short catalogue of his engineering.

The note also hints at his late career. After the Panama Canal affair ended his life as a builder, Eiffel turned the tower into a weather station and a laboratory, measured wind resistance from its platforms and built a wind tunnel at its foot, followed by a larger one in Auteuil.

Uncirculated (UNC): the note has never been in circulation.