When Was The First Lift Invented?

We rely on lifts a lot in the modern world. They help us to transport goods and machinery, make buildings more accessible and can make travelling between floors much easier and quicker. But when was the first lift invented and what was it used for?

From pulley systems for transporting stone to super-speed elevators that take us hundreds of meters in the air, the lift has developed and advanced so much over the course of history.

A lift can be found on almost anything. Machinery often has lifts to allow them to transport goods, buildings have lifts to transport people and some vehicles also have lifts to enable them to manoeuvre objects around. But how did the lift come to be?

To discover this, we must travel back in history to around 200 BC. Archimedes was a Greek mathematician who is originally credited for inventing the beginnings of what we now know to be the modern lift.

However, similar contraptions date back even further to Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians used hoists akin to lifts to help transport rocks and stones when building the pyramids and these were often driven by men or even animals.

While the lift today is a long way off these ancient contraptions, it is clear that their basic mechanics are the same. A rope, or cable, which uses a pulley system to move upwards and downwards in order to transport a load.

In Ancient Rome, a form of lift was used in the colosseum, and they have also been noted as being fashionable and prevalent in royal palaces and castles.

It wasn't until the industrial revolution that this really caught on and became a widespread and commonly used mechanism though. During this period, steam-driven lifts were used in order to carry heavy loads that could not be handled manually.

In the early 19th century, the first hydraulic lift was made. Although during this time, they were still mainly used for the transportation of goods. People carrying lifts were not commonplace due to a lack of safety regulations and fear of the unknown.

It wasn’t until the late 1800s that the passenger lift was invented in New York. The Equitable Life Building was the first in the world to have functioning passenger lifts. The first electrical lift followed not ten years later in 1880, being created in Germany.

Many people were still wary of lifts at this time and chose not to use them, however it is still incredible to think that they were invented so long ago. Although technology has advanced since then, the basic mechanics of the lift remain much the same, showing it to be a historical design.

Lifts have helped to revolutionise the way we live. We are now able to travel up skyscrapers that sit hundreds of metres in the sky in just a few short seconds. It is definite that we take them for granted and don’t truly appreciate just how much easier they have made life.