The Elevator

Imagine the skyline of a modern [blank] if the elevator did not exist. Buildings would be limited to five or six stories. Most of the architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries would be impossible. Office towers, hotels, and high-rise apartments would hardly stand in their present form. The need for [blank] transport is as old as civilization. Over the centuries, mankind has employed ingenious forms of lifting. The earliest lifts used man, animal , and water power to raise the load. Lifting devices relied on these basic [blank] of power from the early agricultural societies until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution from ancient times through the Middle Ages, and into the 13th century, man or animal power was the driving [blank] behind hoisting devices. In ancient Greece, Archimedes developed an [blank] lifting device operated by ropes and pulleys, in which the hoisting ropes were coiled around a winding drum by a captain and levers. By A.D. 80, gladiators and wild animals rode crude elevators up to the arena level of the Roman Coliseum. Medieval records contain numerous drawings of hoists lifting men and supplies to isolated locations. Among the most famous is the hoist at the monastery of St. Barlaam in Greece. The monastery stood on a pinnacle approximately (200 ft) above the ground. The hoist, which employed a basket or cargo net, was the only means up or down.