Rope (upstairs) and hydraulic
(downstairs) lift |
There is a lift nearly indispensable helper in the houses
with more than five floors. The medical research proved that the common walking in the
stairs is two and half times more heavy than quick bicycling and small walking in the
stairs with a heavier load can be compared with a top sport performance. A famous Greek scholar Archimedes destroyed the first lift about 236 before our time, about which we have known. Its cabin hung on a hemp rope and it was raised with a hand jack. The Roma emperor Nero had a lift too (37 – 68 out time). His lift had safety equipment too: a skin inflatable bag that had to reduce the results of the appropriate fall. Much more lately the Pope from Vatican went in a lift too. This Pope lift was powered by a tread wheel simile like these at the wells in the mediaeval castles. The French king ” the king of the Sun ” Ludwig XIV. (1638 - 1715) did not like going on foot .His courtly builder Velayer built a lift for him, even with an anti – weight (that is used so in this time), which balanced the construction of the lift, so it was necessary to lift only ”a load ”. E. Weigel from Jena likely used the first lift in a residential home in 1670, however the right area of lifts is counted from 1853, when American Elisha Graves Otis built and displayed the lift of to - days construction in essence: it was leaded by guides on sides and had a safety equipment. This was a formed so-called holder, which in a case of over weighted of a rope could stop the lift cabin about the guides.
(picture from web page http://www.otis.dk/info/a2.htm ) The first Otis lift was installed in a department store E. V. Haughwout Co. in New York 1857. It served for five floors and went unbeliever speed at this time 0,2 m/s (today’s common speed is till 2,5 m/s). These times lifts were on steam power, possibly on hydraulic power: in the cylinder under the piston was pumped water (this time it is hydraulic oil) and the water lifted the piston. The hydraulic lifts were sometimes lifted straight by piston rod placing under the cabin so they did not need safety equipment (the cabin of the lift went down by itself weight only so quick as it was made possible by draining off water from under the piston) and so they did not need anti – weight. The lift this kind was installed in the palace of Austrian Emperor in Vienna. The hydraulic lifts have been using till to day, but only for objects with a few floors. A famous German electro technical and industrialist Werner von Siemens constructed the lift with electricity power: electromotor was placed just under a floor and it was turning by a small teeth pinion, which was climbing on the teeth ridge this way. In 1880 Siemens installed this lift at the industrial exhibition in Manheim. Later the motor was removed over the top floor, where it powered the rope drum. The cabin was again hung on a rope. This construction served the purpose in a common way but in the end the way where the rope is put over rigging prevailed, where on the one side is the rope of a cabin and on the other side is the load. (So – called traction or rope lifts). This was were solved both problems ” firstly it gave possibility the old – new using of load and saving of energy and secondly it gave possibility the construction of lifts for skyscrapers (there were lifts with drum unusable, because of the long of rope the drum would have had huge dimensions).
The firm Breitfeld – Daněk (later ČKD) was interested in the producing of lifts in the Czech republic. It produced its first lift in 1876 yet and installed it in the brewery in Litoměřice. A steam machine made the power. The first electric lift with press driving the same that we know in this day went in the Prague hotel the blue star. The follower of the Austria – Hungarian throne Ferdinand Déste (1863 – 1914) had built a nice lift in the castle Konopiště in the half of century. Since a lot of things have changed. The lifts are faster, their driving is more accurate, more perfect and they are often driven by microprocessors, and they have changing of frequentation and continuous regulation of arriving. They became common ”traffic” means. In the New York World Trade Centre they are 244 with the whole capacity 4536 kg with a speed 8,13 m/s. |
