A tower is a high structure, usually man-made. The sea can erode the land and make a tower known as a sea-stack .

The air traffic control tower at Bristol Airport, Bristol, England

Purposes:

• being impressive or beautiful
• saving surface area
• for the view
  • for tourism
  • for guiding: air traffic control tower, in particular at an airport, harbour control towers at harbours
  • 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, bell tower
• for showing the time (clock tower)
• as storage for grain (silo)
• for increasing communications distances antenna tower, radio mast
• for use of the gravity: water tower, drop tower
• foor meteorological measurements in different heights (measurement tower)
• as part of a suspension bridge or cable-stayed bridge
• for supporting power and signal cables (pylon)
• for access to rockets in order to prepare them for launch (launch tower)
• for the guidance of unguided rockets at launch (service tower, supply tower)
• for physical experiments (drop tower, BREN Tower)
• for solar thermal power stations
• as chimneys
• for fixing nuclear boms at tests (bomb tower)
• for drilling in the ground (drilling tower)
• 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
• for gaining wind power
• as support structure for aerial tramways
• to gain access for maintenance or cleaning, e.g. scaffold tower
• for mounting thyristors in a HVDC (thyristor tower)
• for attacking a walled city: siege tower
• to reach heaven (legendary Tower of Babel)
• for the production of bullets for rapid hunting (German:Schrotkugel)
• for ski jumping and ski flying

Skyscrapers are sometimes not thought of as towers. In the UK, tall domestic buildings are referred to as tower blocks. In the USA the now-destroyed New York World Trade Center had the nickname the Twin Towers, a name shared with the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

The Eiffel Tower

A tower wagon is a mobile tower for construction work, firefighting, rescue work, window cleaning, filming. A railroad tower allowed railroad employees to view the tracks and switches near the tower; it now refers to any location housing interlocking equipment.

See also:

• Eiffel Tower
• Radio Tower Berlin
• Gerbrandy Tower
• Petronas Tower
• Tower of London
• Tokyo Tower
• World's tallest structures
• List of towers
• Inclined towers