Eli5, how did elevators work before electricity?
In: Technology
For one, elevators as we see them today were invented after electricity,
But, ancient lifting devices/elevators if you wanna call them that are in principle Pretty similar to modern elevators.
You have the car, with a cord that runs up, goes around a wheel, and then goes back down to something big in heavy that counter balances the car.
The counter weight means if you have a elevator car that weighs 500 pounds, with a weight on the other end that weighs 500 pounds, it doesn’t actually take much work to raise and lower both sides, side they both counter each other, it’s kind of like standing at the center of a seesaw and making both sides go up and down.
Then, when the elevator has people in it, you only really need to counter the weight of those people, instead of the whole elevator, which using a crank to lift a 150 pound person is way easier than using one to lift a 650 pound elevator.
[like this!](https://youtu.be/5vte0EXhK3Y?t=2804) just kidding. I mean, maybe it was very similar; you probably would have a bunch of weights offset the weight of the elevator car.
Believe it or not, elevators have existed since grecian times, and to answer your question, there have been a lot of methods used to use elevators: Mechanical power from humans and pack animals, steam, gear systems, combustion motors, even primitive hydraulics and water displacement (which some elvators, and the Panama Canal, still rely on).
The PASSENGER elevators you’re probably asking about pretty much always did run on electric motors, but mining elevators, construction elevators, and freight elevators before 1880 (when electric passenger elevators were invented) have only recently run on electricity.
EDIT: Corrected canal
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