Steam and Hydraulic Elevators

The era of man, animal, water and wind power, lasting from the earliest agricultural societies to the British Industrial Revolution, saw the continuous creation of innovative combinations of the lever, counterweight, crank, wheel, windlass, wedge, pulley, block and rope to lift materials, then people. With increasing sophisticated arrangements, these relatively simple mechanisms were modified and merged by new classes of specialists to feed multitudes, store surplus, wage wars, build cities and their incumbent structures, foster wider trade and create the religious and secular monuments, sites of art and entertainment that were the marks of cultures and the brands of civilizations. The taming of steam, once looked upon as a toy, turned the mechanical world upside down, enabling ever greater forces to be tamed by engineers and manufacturers, including the elevation of ever greater and more varied loads of the new commercial and industrial economies higher and faster, bedplate, and finally -- on a common bedplate.