Elevator (machine)

“ The elevator is not exactly a new idea. Its pioneer form may be traced back to the Middle Ages, when heavy weights were lifted by aid of an apparatus worked by hand power. But it was not until well on into the nineteenth century that the steam-power elevator came into service. The first example is said to have been produced by Elisha Graves Otis, who applied steam power to an elevating machine in a little shop at Yonkers, on the banks of the Hudson, New York. ”

“ As the stalks are carried back by chains, pins or hooks on bars tear open the husks of the ears; and the bars, in connection with rollers, break the ears from the stalks. The ears, when broken off, drop through an opening in the platform into an elevator, up which they are carried, and are discharged into a wagon drawn at the side of the machine. The box of the elevator is supported from the frame of the machine, and its carrier is driven from a shaft by an endless band. ”

“ Only keep your elevator-flaps well lifted!”
He threw back the yoke with a laugh. In bending toward her he had permitted the machine to gain the level once more. The great bird slanted upward at an abrupt angle, and poised, quivering.
“You are brave!” she cried. Her level eyes dared him, her lips provoked and promised. He closed his eyes for a moment, made giddy by her radiance and by the blaze of the untempered sun on the aluminium hood just beyond her. ”

“ By the last quarter of the century, a continuous series of improvements in the valving, control systems, and safety features of the steam machine had made possible an elevator able to compete with the subsequently appearing hydraulic systems for freight and low-rise passenger service insofar as smoothness, control, and lifting power were concerned. However, steam machinery began to fail in this competition as the increasing height of buildings rapidly extended the demands of speed and length of rise. ”

“ With such an arrangement of wings and elevator, every time the wings became more nearly horizontal in flight and met the air at a smaller angle on their under sides, the elevator would meet the air at a greater angle on its upper side. So, he reasoned, whenever, by becoming more nearly horizontal, the wings caused the center of pressure to move forward, tending to turn the machine upward in front, the front elevator would receive a greater downward pressure on its upper side and so counteract the disturbing pressure on the wings. ”

“ Chesterton was telling us, it was a curious thing. He had always heard that Americans worshipped machines. A machine everywhere here, and a machine brought to an amazing state of mechanical perfection, was the elevator, as we called it. When he had first got into an American elevator he had been arrested by the fact that the men entering it took off their hats and stood silently with bared heads as it ascended. ”

“ Where the machine is just leaving the ground and the elevator has been set at an excessive angle, the rear end of the skids or the tail may slap the ground hard and break off, or they will impose so much resistance upon its movement by scraping over the turf that the machine can not attain its soaring speed. ”

“ The elevator is a single plane controlled by a rod connected with the steering wheel, while the tips of the horizontal tail surfaces are controlled in unison with the main elevator by wires, also connected with the steering wheel. Ailerons are set into the rear outer tips of the main planes, for the control of the side-to-side balance, and these are worked by foot pedals. In order to give greater safety in case of the breakage of a wire, all the controlling parts in the Maurice Farman machine are duplicate, which is a big step toward the much-desired double controlling system in aeroplanes. ”

“ In the plan as first presented, a ground-based steam engine drove the frames and rollers through an endless fly rope—traveling at high speed presumably to permit it to be of small diameter and still transmit a reasonable amount of power—which engaged pulleys on the cars. The design was remarkably similar to that of the Miller Patent Screw Hoisting Machine, which had had a brief life in the United States around 1865. ”

“ Since the only practical way in which the power of a steam engine could be applied to the haulage of elevator cables was through a rotational system, the [Pg 10] cables invariably were wound on a drum. The travel or rise of the car was therefore limited by the cable capacity of the winding drum. As building heights increased, drums became necessarily longer and larger until they grew so cumbersome as to impose a serious limitation upon further upward growth. A drum machine rarely could be used for a lift of more than 150 feet. ”

“ We have to walk up a flight of stairs, and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. ”

“ They set off a knife which cuts the tops off while other fingers lift the beet out and put it on an elevator which removes the clods of dirt as it travels. Once in a while the machine makes a mistake and delivers a stone, or a chunk of mud at the end of the elevator. ”

“ Upon his judgment of the time of first touching the earth depends the success of safely alighting. He may bank too high, and come down on the tail with disastrous results. If there is plenty of field room it is better to come down at a less angle, or even keep the machine at an even keel, and the elevator can then depress the tail while running over the ground, and thus bring the machine to rest. ”

“ When Orville turned the elevator to avoid striking the ground, the machine turned suddenly and unexpectedly away from the tree, because, in this steeply banked condition, the elevator exerted more pressure laterally than it did vertically. (When an aeroplane is banked to 45 degrees the elevator serves just as much for a rudder as for an elevator, and the rudder just as much for an elevator as for a rudder.) Though the machine lightly touched the ground, Orville flew it on back to the hangar, where the branch of the tree was found still clinging to the upright. ”

“ In examining the system, it is difficult to determine what single element in its design might have caused such a problem as to have been beyond the engineering ability of a French firm, and to have caused such concern to a large, well-established American organization of Otis’ wide elevator and inclined railway experience. Indeed, when the French system—which served the first platform from the east and west legs—is examined, it appears curious that a national technology capable of producing a machine at such a level of complexity should have been unable to deal easily with the entire matter. ”

“ Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in, gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light. ”

“ When the elevator is at transfer point, the roller should be free of the cam. Adjust by the nut on the connecting bolt which connects the two levers. This is to assure the elevator seating in its proper position on the transfer channel to receive the line of matrices from the first elevator. The machine should be in normal position, the automatic stopping pawl resting on the upper stopping lever, when making this adjustment. With the machine in normal position, adjust so the connecting bolt is free to turn, with no end play between the head of the bolt and the adjusting nut. ”

“ First—When a line is given to the first elevator, just as the machine is about completing its revolution to deliver the previous line, and before the elevator is fairly settled into place, the line may become twisted, although not enough to prevent it from going down into the casting pawls. The mold cannot come forward far enough to close up tightly on account of the twisted matrices, and the result is a squirt, and the metal flies all over the mold face and into the elevator jaw, soldering it up and stopping the machine. ”

“ Moreover, on the steam roads, at all the great terminals, and wherever there were tunnels to be passed through, the old giant steam engine in time yielded place to the electric motor.
The application of the electric motor to the "vertical railway," or elevator, made possible the steel skyscraper. The elevator, of course, is an old device. It was improved and developed in America by Elisha Graves Otis, an inventor who lived and died before the Civil War and whose sons afterward erected a great business on foundations laid by him. ”

“ Operators of hotels and stores gradually became aware of the commercial advantages to be gained by elevating their patrons even one or two floors above the ground, by machinery. The steam engine formed the foundation of the early elevator industry, but as building heights increased it was gradually replaced by hydraulic, and ultimately by electrical, systems. ”

“ The ordinary elevator is very useful in a large business or commercial house, where it saves the legs of people who, if they had to tramp up flight after flight of stairs, would probably not spend so much money as they would be ready to part with if their vertical travel from one floor to another was entirely free of effort. But the ordinary lift is, like a railway, intermittent. We all know what it means to stand at the grille and watch the cage slide downwards on its journey of, perhaps, four floors, when we want to go to a floor higher up. ”

“ However, counterweights are provided which balance the weight of the car, so that practically the only weight lifted by the plunger is that of the passengers. The advantage of this type of elevator is that it reduces the danger of accident. The motion of the car is steady and easily controlled. [103] The car cannot move down above a given speed and the only possible danger is that the plunger might break. However, a shaft of steel 61⁄2 inches in diameter, even if hollow, is hardly likely to give way even under the most extraordinary loads to which it might be subjected in elevator service. ”

“ The ordinary buckets used for grain or coal are replaced by other appliances for gripping and holding the object to be raised from a lower to a higher level, but in principle these appliances are essentially elevators.
Another kind of elevator, known as a lift or hoist, is used in mines and quarries and in serving blast furnaces. This is an elevator with one or two buckets. Essentially a heavy load lifter, it is intended for material of too large a bulk to be handled economically by ordinary elevators, and is employed for lifting in either a vertical or, more often, an inclined direction. ”

“ Such elevators may be constructed to carry either grain or minerals. The advantages are greater capacity than an ordinary elevator of the same dimensions and a more uniform delivery; moreover, smoother running is secured, since the buckets being close together need not plunge intermittently through the contents of the elevator-well. ”

“ Since generally speaking the speed of his engine will remain constant, he rises, remains at the same height or falls, at will, by the simple manipulation of the elevator through which he can change the tilt or inclination.
Most machines have a fixed tail as well as a horizontal rudder or elevator, the same being so set that it tends to keep the plane in a certain normal inclination, the elevator being called in to increase that or diminish it as may be required. ”

“ On the other hand, elevators handling heavy material must be set at an angle in order to give a clear delivery at a much lower speed of 50 to 60 ft. per minute; in other words, the elevator is so inclined that the shoot for the reception of the material can be put underneath the delivering buckets which slowly disgorge their load. To obtain good results, without taking up too much space, an elevator carrying heavy material should be set at 40° to 60° to the horizontal. ”

“ Electricity may be applied to elevators of this type by attaching the travelling sheaves to a nut in which works a screwed shaft driven by an electric motor. In other electric lifts the cables which support the cage are wound on a drum which is turned by a motor, the drum being connected to the motor-shaft either by a series of pinions or by a worm-gear. The drum may also be worked by a steam or gas engine. Where the traffic is not very heavy, a form of elevator that requires no attendant is convenient. ”

“ The front edge of the elevator should be set about 3/8 inch higher than the back, and the model be tried first as a glider, with the rubber and propellers in position. If it glides satisfactorily, wind up the motor, say 500 turns, and launch by hand. When a good flight has been obtained, and the correct angle of the elevator has been determined, place the model on a strip of linoleum, wind up, and release the propellers. ”