WI: Elevator perfected and widespread earlier?

[Emperor Norton I]

It's been said that the elevator gave birth to the modern city by allowing higher buildings which in turn spurred growth as the cities could grow upward, as well as outward.

So what if the elevator was perfected and came into popular usage earlier than it did?

[The Admiral Hook]

Nort,

When were you thinking? That might help to narrow down the possibilities.

[Emperor Norton I]

Originally Posted by TheInfiniteApe

Nort,

When were you thinking? That might help to narrow down the possibilities.

Between the beginning of time and the popular adoption of the elevator in the Victorian (?) era.

That narrows it down, doesn't it?

[The Admiral Hook]

Originally Posted by Emperor Norton I

Between the beginning of time and the popular adoption of the elevator in the Victorian (?) era.

That narrows it down, doesn't it?

Oh yes, thank you!

There wasn't much of a functional need for elevators until they were widely used, afaik. I assume an earlier version of the lift in big ships would be a good start to earlier tall cities as, it would appear, that is the end to which you are trying to reach...

[Electric Monk]

(Problems with early elevators: electricity, safety, cable strength/length, etc….)

Well. Everyone likes pneumatic tubes, right?

In 1799 George Medhurst gets funding for his cast iron pneumatic tubes. With early success he has a full subway approved in 1805 (considered 1812, OTL) and soon pneumatic tubes and subways grow more and more popular.

Key problem so far: finding something better than leather as a seal.

By the 1820s someone suggests applying this principle to primitive elevators. Boom. In terms of height and safety we just jumped to the 1870s or so.

So there's a fifty year head start on tall buildings and we've kicked off citywide postal pneumatic postal & freight services and (in most ways) better subways although at increased cost.

[Shevek23]

I suspect this is all a bit backwards; the constraint on building height was not so much the lack of elevators as the structural methods of making them very tall. I could be wrong about this as tall towers, say for Gothic cathedrals or towers like the one at Pisa existed close to a thousand years ago. But I gather all of these were major projects that took centuries to complete and sometimes collapsed in mid-construction; you could hardly have every apartment building thrown up in a hurry along their lines, and if you did a lot of them would fall down. (Fewer and fewer as they got empirically better at it to be sure). My impression is, it was only with the development of relatively cheap steels that could be churned out in quantity that really tall buildings became possible.

At which point, steel cable for the elevators is available.

Of course another limit on elevators is that they had better be fast and reliable, if one elevator is the only practical way to reach a high floor. If instead of a single car per shaft, you had a continual ladder like a vertical escalator--I know they had some things like that in some buildings, there's even a special name for them but I forget what it is--then the thing could be relatively slow and of course if no one has to stop it and start it, it's relatively simple. Probably a lot heavier actually than a single elevator car, however elaborate, and of course if someone falls off they'd just keep falling, unless the "rungs" fill the shaft--in which case there is danger of getting fingers or limbs cut off. And of course it could still break. But something like that, with rungs or even platforms going up continually on one side and down continually on the other, is I suppose the logical ancestor of the elevator.

[MattII]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

I suspect this is all a bit backwards; the constraint on building height was not so much the lack of elevators as the structural methods of making them very tall.

I concur, structural engineering was a far bigger limitation on 19th century buildings than a lack of elevators.

I could be wrong about this as tall towers, say for Gothic cathedrals or towers like the one at Pisa existed close to a thousand years ago. But I gather all of these were major projects that took centuries to complete and sometimes collapsed in mid-construction;

Notre Dame de Paris took over 180 years to complete, so time is an issue. I suspect the cathedrals, being made of stone, would be stronger than pure concrete structures, but I don't know.

[Roger II]

Besides, a cathedral is fairly hollow, so it's not a great guide to how to build a large commercial or residential building except maybe from a strictly aesthetic perspective. The entire support system is pretty much "hold up the vault either with walls or butresses and piers", which doesn't really allow for much subdivision of vertical space.

[Dupplin Muir]

Shevek23 wrote:

Of course another limit on elevators is that they had better be fast and reliable, if one elevator is the only practical way to reach a high floor. If instead of a single car per shaft, you had a continual ladder like a vertical escalator--I know they had some things like that in some buildings, there's even a special name for them but I forget what it is

I believe it's called a Paternoster!

[PoorBoy]

Here's my Rube Goldberg idea :

Top: Pulley
Hemp Rope
Wooden Cage
Lead Pipes on each floor to shout out instructions

Basement:
Slavemaster instructing slaves who are running a mill to pull/lower/stop the elevator.
Alternatively, replace slavemaster with herder and slaves with oxen.

[carlton_bach]

Originally Posted by PoorBoy

Here's my Rube Goldberg idea :

Top: Pulley
Hemp Rope
Wooden Cage
Lead Pipes on each floor to shout out instructions

Basement:
Slavemaster instructing slaves who are running a mill to pull/lower/stop the elevator.
Alternatively, replace slavemaster with herder and slaves with oxen.

Those existed. They're horribly expensive and quite unsafe, but that didn't stop people from building them.

The main problem is not coming up with the idea of an elevator. The idea has been around at least since Roman times, and most likely since the first elderly Sumerian priest looked up a ziggurat. The problem is building one that is safe, easy to use, and cheap. You don't nercessarily need very tall buildings to motivate one, either - elevators are extremely popular with houses as comparatively short as five stories. Phoenician and Syrian cities of the late Iron Age supposedly had ten-story housing, and Roman cities certainly built that high. Howev ver, the technological obstacles to building a working elevator at the time were huge. In realistic terms, a few decades earlier is the best you can hope for.

[Prince Charon]

Hmm, perhaps some sort of screw-based elevator? Probably safer than a rope-and-pulley system, and I'm pretty sure they had them quite some time ago, but the height would have been limited by the structural strength of the material involved. Maybe have pairs of elevators next to each other for exceptionally tall buildings, where the top of one is on the same floor as the bottom of the other, and you alternate between them.

Before cheap steel, of course, you'd probably only need two or three of them.

[carlton_bach]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Hmm, perhaps some sort of screw-based elevator? Probably safer than a rope-and-pulley system, and I'm pretty sure they had them quite some time ago, but the height would have been limited by the structural strength of the material involved. Maybe have pairs of elevators next to each other for exceptionally tall buildings, where the top of one is on the same floor as the bottom of the other, and you alternate between them.

Before cheap steel, of course, you'd probably only need two or three of them.

Long screws are maintenance hell. From everything I've read, more than a metre of clearance on a pre-machine-tool era screw press means you'll be spending as much time repairing and servicing it as you do working with it.