Elevator shaft

“ An Elevator is something which is found in but few doll-houses. It was built in this house, thinking it might please the young mistress, and it proved such a success that the scheme has been worked out carefully in Figs. 228, 229, 230, 231, and 232, that you may include it in the house you build.
The cutting of the elevator-shaft has already been described. For material, procure two small pulleys such as is shown in Fig. 230, four feet of brass chain, six feet of No. 12 wire, half a dozen double-pointed tacks or very small screw-eyes, a short piece of lead pipe, and a cigar-box. ”

“ The sides of the car are usually designed to slide against timber guides on the shaft walls. Some form of safety device, of which there are several kinds, should be employed to prevent the fall of the elevator, in case the hoisting rope breaks, or some mishap occurs to the hoisting machinery, which endangers the fall of the car. ”

“ The mitring is shown in the drawings (Fig. 102) .
Besides cutting a stair opening in the second floor, make an opening three by five inches in the second and third floors for
The Elevator-shaft. Care must be taken to have these openings exactly over one another. Make the opening in the second floor six by eight inches in the place indicated upon the plan. This will allow for the elevator shaft and stairway. No stairway has been built to the third story, as the elevator serves the purpose, and one would take up too much of the ball-room space. ”

“ The loads which can be carried in single skips are also smaller than those possible where elevators are used; and this, combined with the slower hoisting speed required, reduces the capacity of this method, as compared with the use of elevators. Where elevators are employed, however, the plant required is much more extensive and costly; it comprising not only the elevator cars with their safety devices, etc., but the construction of a guiding framework for these cars in the tunnel shaft. ”

“ A typical control of the immensely popular “joy-stick” type is shown by Fig. 100. This consists of a vertical column pivoted through the medium of a fork-joint to a rocking shaft. The elevator wires are taken round pulleys mounted under the seat, and the aileron wires from a form of bell-crank, flanged and welded to the steel tube. A disadvantage with this system, in addition to the complication of the wires, is that lateral movement also affects the elevator, although the extent of this is of no great moment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Further, by far the larger number of mishaps are not due to failure or fault of the elevator itself, but occur in and about the entrances of, or in the hoistways of such apparatus, from persons falling through unguarded openings into elevator shafts, and of course a number are due to the recklessness and incompetence of employes and operators. ”

“ Only safety stops could prevent such an occurrence if the operator failed to stop the car at the top or bottom of the shaft, and even these were not always effective. Hydraulic machines were not susceptible to this danger, the piston or plunger being arrested by the ends of the cylinder at the extremes of travel.
THE HYDRAULIC ELEVATOR
The rope-geared hydraulic elevator, which was eventually to become known as the “standard of the industry,” is generally thought to have evolved directly from an invention of the English engineer Sir William Armstrong (1810-1900) of ordnance fame. ”

“ This funnel-shaped portion extends from fifteen to twenty feet above the contracted base, depending upon the size and height of the elevator. A stiff rubber flange around the lower edge of the carriage leaves a space for the escape of the air in the contracted portion of not more than one fourth of an inch wide. The straight part of the shaft above the funnel is of a size to leave a space of six to eight inches all around the carriage. With such a constructed shaft, the carriage, when it begins to fall, readily presses the air from beneath it up the sides of the shaft. ”

“ The rapidity with which a building is consumed by flames is due to the wind and the draughts from stairways, open doors and windows and elevator shafts. The walls of elevator shafts and all vertical openings should be built of non-combustible material, such as brick and mortar and all elevators should be equipped with automatic traps. In case of a fire on the first floor, the automatic trap would fall when a certain degree of heat was reached and thus prevent the fire from reaching the second floor, and the progress of the fire would be delayed. ”

“ That is more than all the railroads of the country carry in a week; and railroad injuries run up into the thousands every year. In the Manhattan Syndicate Building, we are going to have the finest system of elevators in the world, all driven by electricity, a regular railroad system, with “locals” and “expresses”—some of them running up to the twenty-eighth floor without a stop.”
“It must take an awful lot of power to lift an elevator,” I remarked.
“Not as much as you think. In fact, it often takes more power to ran an empty car down than a partly loaded one up.” ”

“ When an elevator is intended for lifting heavy materials, such as coal, coke or cement, it is usually set at a slant (figs. 15 and 16) , and the endless belt is replaced by one or two strands of endless chain which support the buckets and run over the terminal sprocket wheels. The buckets are attached to the links of the chains, and to prevent these heavy buckets and chains from sagging in their inclined position, rollers or more often short skidder bars are fixed to each bucket, sliding on well-oiled angle bars on each side of the elevator frame. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The "water hammer" produced by the quick acting valves of elevators has always been objectionable, both in its effect at the pumping-house and upon water mains and connections. To obviate this, Engineer G. W. Pearson has suggested the use of very large air chambers on the elevator supply, and still smaller openings in the mains, his theory being that the air chambers would not only materially decrease the concussion or "water hammer," but that they would also act as accumulators of power (or water under pressure) to be drawn from at each trip of the elevator, and replaced when it was at rest. ”

“ The engineer has to integrate the various factors in each individual case, and determine which method will best fulfill his purpose, which is to handle the material at the least cost within the given time and conditions.
Fig. 37.—Elevator Car for Tunnel Shafts.
The construction of elevators for tunnel work is simple. The elevator car consists usually of an open framework box of timber and iron, having a plank floor on which car tracks are laid, and its roof arranged for connecting the hoisting cable (Fig. 37 [7] ) . Rigid construction is necessary to resist the hoisting strains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We do not feel compelled to shut our eyes to a fact so well known as that elevators have for many years been used for transferring grain from railway cars to vessels lying alongside, and that this method involves the use of a railway track entering a fixed or stationary building, an elevator apparatus, elevator hopper scales for weighing the grain, and a discharge spout for discharging the grain into the vessel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In addition to stairways, towers are placed at the rear of the mill, for the purpose of accommodating the elevators and sanitary arrangements. It is not desirable that elevators should be boxed or surrounded with anything that would result in the construction of a flue; but it is preferable that they pass directly through the floors, with the openings protected by automatic hatchways which close whenever the elevator car is absent. ”

“ For elevating materials, such as large coal, iron ore, limestone, &c., which are too large to be fed into ordinary elevators, and must therefore be handled intermittently, the single bucket elevator or hoist may be used with advantage. ”

“ 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 elevator as well as the escalator will play a vastly important part in the fabrication of the new Macy's. The one has by no means been overshadowed by the [Pg 269] growing importance of the other. There are to be in all fifty-six elevators, of one type or another, in the reconstructed building. Of all these none is more interesting than the ingenious lifts by which whole motor trucks, laden as well as empty, are carried into the structure, up eleven floors to the merchandising reception rooms and down into the basement and sub-basement for filling for the city delivery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The curvature of the Tower’s legs imposed a problem unique in elevator design, and it caused great annoyance to Eiffel, the fair’s Commission, and all others concerned. Since a vertical shaftway anywhere within the open area beneath the first platform was esthetically unthinkable, the elevators could be placed only in the inclined legs. ”

“ I am credibly informed that in some of the huge down-town buildings they run "express" elevators, which do not stop before the fifteenth, eighteenth, twentieth floor, as the case may be. Some such arrangement seems very necessary, for the elevator Bummelzugs, which stops at every floor, take quite an appreciable slice out of the average New York day. I wonder that American ingenuity has not provided a system of pneumatic passenger-tubes for lightning communication with these aërial suburbs, these "mansions in the sky." ”

“ Not until the beginning of the 20th century, when hydraulic systems were forced into competition with electrical systems, was the direct plunger elevator improved in America to the extent of being practically capable of high rises and speeds. Another reason for its early disfavor in the United States was the necessity for drilling an expensive plunger well equal in length to the rise. [14]
As mentioned, the most serious problem confronting Edoux was the extremely high rise of 525 feet. The Trocadero elevator, then the highest plunger machine in the world, traveled only about 230 feet. ”