Elevator
3 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Elevator. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a moving platform or cage in a building, for carrying passengers or freight up and down. Vitruvius, an architect of Rome about 26 B. c., describes in his writings an apparatus built by Archimedes in the year 236 b. c., for lifting very heavy weights. This, as nearly as can be ascertained, is the first mention in history of an elevating device. About 1850 platform freight elevators were manufactured by Henry Waterman of New York City and George C. Fox & Company of Boston, Mass. One of the first instances of a practical elevator installation for carrying passengers was the lift installed in the old Fifth Avenue Hotel at 5th Avenue and 23d Street, New York City. The building was six stories high and the elevator consisted of a cast-iron screw extending the total height of the building. The car was built around the screw, the rotation of which caused the car to move either up or down. The first elevator to be operated successfully by direct electric power, was designed and installed by the Otis Brothers' Company in the Demarest Building, New York City, during the year 1889. The modern electric high-speed gearless traction elevator was developed by the Otis Elevator Company, in 1904, the first installation of this type being in the New York Edison Company's Building, New York. Elevators may be divided into five general classes: electric, hydraulic, steam, belt, and hand power, to which may be added the escalator or moving stairway. Electric elevators, constituting about 90 per cent. of the installations of the present time, are of two types, namely, those with winding drums and those with traction sheaves. The former type are designed with drums spirally grooved on which the cables wind and unwind in DRIVING SHEAVE IDLER SHEAVE IDLER SHEAVE CAR ← JOLER SHEAVE OIL BUFFER OIL BUFFER GEARLESS TRACTION ELEVATOR raising and lowering the elevator. Elevators of the traction type are provided with straight grooved sheaves over which the cables pass, the friction between the sheave and the cables being utilized for raising and lowering the elevator. Figure 1 shows in diagram the usual arrangement of car, counterbalance cables, etc., for an electric drum machine, while Figure 2 shows a similar arrangement for the traction type electric elevator. The worm-geared drum machine was almost universally used until the advent of the high-speed gearless traction machine which was designed to eliminate the excessive drum sizes required for tall buildings. The worm-geared traction machine has now been developed to cover the field of the worm-geared drum type machine. The elevator machinery may be located either at the base of the hatchway or over the top of the hatchway, the latter location being preferable as it simplifies the arrangement. There are three principal types of hydraulic elevators: the vertical, the horizontal and the plunger type. Both the vertical and the horizontal types consist of a cylinder with piston rods connected to traveling sheaves, around which pass the cables which are attached to the car. By introducing water into the cylinder under pressure, the piston is caused to move and the car raised. To lower the car, the water is allowed to discharge from the cylinder, the weight of the car being sufficient to overcome the friction of the water through the valves, pipes, etc. The plunger elevator consists of a tube sunk in the ground a distance equal to the rise of the elevator and a plunger attached to the bottom of the car working in this tube through a stuffing box. Movement of the car is accomplished by COUNTER water under pressure entering the cylin- WEIGHT der, causing the plunger and the car to rise. To lower the car the water is allowed to discharge from the cylinder. Except in special cases, very few hydraulic elevators are being installed at the present time, the cost of installation and also the cost of operation being much higher than for the electric type of elevator. The steam type of elevator consists of a steam engine as the motive power, geared to a winding drum around which the cables to the car pass. This type of elevator is practically obsolete at the present time. The belt elevator is usually driven from a line shaft and is only used for slow speeds. The hand power elevator is used only when the service is infrequent and the expense of installing a power-driven elevator is not warranted. It is operated by pulling an endless rope over a driving sheave which is geared to the winding machine. Safety features of elevator. - With the exception of the plunger type of elevator, practically all elevators are provided with what is known as a Safety Device, designed to grip the guide rails and stop DRIVING SHEAVE JDLER SHEAVE COUNTER WEIGHT CAR OIL BUFFER OIL BUFFER ROPING FOR GEARLESS TRACTION ELEVATOR the car if for any reason the speed of the elevator becomes excessive or if, due to the breaking of the lifting cables, the car starts to fall. Additional safeties are provided to automatically stop the car at the upper and lower terminal landings in case the operator neglects to do so, and if the car runs by these landings, to cut off the supply of current, apply the brake, and bring the car to rest. In connection with high-speed traction elevators, the gearless type of which is used for passenger service in the modern office buildings of our large cities, it is usual to provide oil-cushion buffers under the car and under the counterweight. If, due to accident, the car runs past the upper or lower landings, these buffers are compressed, bringing the car gradually to rest and at the same time reducing the traction between the lifting cables and the driving sheave. This is a very important safety feature as it prevents any further travel of the car or the counter-weight. Taking the borough of Manhattan in the city of New York as an example, more than double the number of passengers are carried vertically in elevators than are carried by the surface, subway, and elevated lines combined, while the percentage of accidents to passengers traveling in elevators is very much less. This is due to the exceptional safety features provided in connection with passenger elevators.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
in agricultural countries, a building used for handling grain. An elevator differs from a warehouse or a granary in that it has special facilities for obviating labor. First of all are the elevators to which farmers draw their grain. In the Red River Valley, for instance, grain is hauled in bulk in wagon boxes with high sides. The wagon is driven under shelter upon a balanced platform. The platform tilts on a pivot, lowering the rear end of the wagon; the tail board of the wagon box is opened, and the wheat or other grain slides out and down into a pit. Tin cups or buckets running on an endless belt, driven usually by a gasoline engine, scoup up the grain and carry it aloft into any one of many bins. These receiving elevators stand usually on a spur track for the accomodation of freight cars. Grain is loaded into the cars, running by its own weight through spouts. State laws authorize the erection of elevators along suitable sidetracks, and require railways to provide proper car service. Large grain buyers erect a series of elevators, one at a station, for the entire length of a railway system. Competing buyers put up competing lines of elevators. Not infrequently grain raisers combine to build a farmers' elevator to handle and sell their own grain and save the middleman's profit. A town of 1,000 people may have a dozen elevators. Altogether they loom conspicuously against the horizon. They are the skyscrapers of the prairie town. Mammoth elevators are built at terminal points. An elevator with a storage capacity of 1,000,000 bushels excites no remark. Ordinarily a terminal elevator handles but one article, as wheat, oats, barley, corn, timothy seed, clover, flax, etc. There are facilities for fanning and for sifting and for drying and for mixing. Certain elevators, as those at Kasota, Minnesota, make a specialty of sending wheat in showers through a blast of sulphur vapor, this, not only to destroy smut, but to bleach the kernels and impart a bright, marketable color. Ninety cars a day may be treated. The American elevator originated at Buffalo, New York ,--a meeting place of lake, railway, and canal transportation. The work of transferring grain in bags was not only laborious, but it was slow and expensive. The building of elevators is a business in itself. They must be able to withstand enormous bursting pressure. When lumber was less expensive the outer walls of the large elevators were built of heavy plank laid flat and spiked down, one on the other, to a height of perhaps a hundred feet. The whole was covered oftentimes with iron sheeting to keep out rain and ward off sparks from passing locomotives. The walls were tied together by partitions and long iron rods. The increasing cost of wooden construction and immense losses from fire have led to the use of concrete, reinforced by steel bars. With a change of material has come a change of shape also. The rectangular form has given way to the circular. The following table showing the number of elevators and their storage capacity in bushels for the more important grain centers is taken from the Minneapolis Journal (1909): Chicago . . . . . 79 61,325,000 Minneapolis . . . . . 51 42,240,000 Duluth-Superior . . . . . 24 30,175,000 Buffalo . . . . . 28 24,190,000 Fort William & Port Arthur 28,490,000 New York . . . . . 18 13,230,000 Kansas City . . . . . 24 9,780,000 St. Louis . . . . . 33 9,375,000 Baltimore . . . . . 6 6,350,000 Milwaukee . . . . . 5 4,350,000 New Orleans . . . . . 5 4,200,000 Montreal . . . . . 5 4,125,000 Galveston . . . . . 4 3,800,000 Detroit . . . . . 17 3,525,000 Philadelphia . . . . . 5 3,550,000 Newport News . . . . . 3 2,650,000 Boston . . . . . 3 2,000,000 Cincinnati . . . . . 9 1,750,000
The Encyclopedia of Founding (1892)
A mechanical contrivance for lifting sand, coal, ores, grain, etc., from the floor, or from prepared boxes, to a higher elevation to be there deposited by means of strong belts carrying a series of buckets travelling over drums placed at each end of the distance travelled; lifting the material at the bottom turn, and depositing at the top. See HOIST; CONVEYER. Embroidery Impressions on Cast Iron.--Impressions of lace embroidery and similar objects can be produced by following the instructions given by Mr. Outerbridge in a paper read at a meeting of the Franklin Institute, which is substantially as follows: First, carefully imbed the object to be operated upon on charcoal-dust confined in a cast-iron box. After securing the lid heat slowly in the oven, and when the moisture has all escaped increase the heat until the blue smoke escaping from the box ceases. The box is then heated up to a white heat and so kept for two hours, and then allowed to cool. By holding the object in a gas-flame it will be discovered whether it has been thoroughly carbonized or not; if the operation has been successful it will not glow when removed from the flame. The object, after thorough carbonization, is secured to a green-sand surface, and the metal cast over in the ordinary manner. If care is exercised, a number of impressions may be taken from the same substance. See HAND-WRITING IMPRESSIONS IN CAST IRON. Emerald is cut and polished for the best jewelry; it is known from beryl by its deeper and richer green. The finest of these stones come from the neighborhood of Peru. Emerald fuses with difficulty into a porous glass. Its composition is: silex 64.5, glucine 13, alumina 16, lime 1.6, oxide of chrome 3.25; specific gravity, 2.70. See BERYL; PRECIOUS STONES. Emery is an impure kind of corundum, gray to dark-brown in color. Most of this substance is artificially colored a dark, rich brown for commerce, and for all common purposes, as emery-cloth, is usually adulterated with iron-slag, garnet, etc. It is opaque, of slightly glistening metallic lustre; hardness equal to corundum, and of about the same specific gravity and composition as the latter. Even the sapphire and oriental ruby, the hardest substance next to the diamond, can be cut and polished with emery. See CORUNDUM; PRECIOUS STONES.