1804 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



341 



you may ask. Well, in that case you would 

 have to pull as much as an average man weighs. 

 In fact, if you were a little under weight you 

 might hang your whole weight on the rope, 

 and it would not come down then, because you 

 are not heavy enough to make it come down. 

 Another thing, that ingenious brake, with its 

 terrible clutch, holds the cage like a grip of 

 death until somebody steps on it with suitable 

 weight. Somebody weighing 100 pounds or 

 more must step on this brake and bring the 

 cage down. Two can go up together, it is true, 

 but they will both have to pull on the rope. If 

 the second man weighs 150 pounds, e(tc}i one of 

 the two must pull HT^o pounds lo make up for 

 his weight. Please notice, that as you pull 

 down on the rope you also lift a part of your 

 weight from the platform on which you stand. 

 Changing the balance-weights makes some 

 difference; but there has got to be some work 

 done to carry up more than one person. Two 

 children weighing 7.5 pounds apiece will go up 

 just as easily as one man weighing 150. But if 

 one of the children wants to go down alone, he 

 has got to pull up on the rope half his own 

 weight. We have had the machine at work 

 for only two days now, at this writing. A g03d 

 deal of the time, when somebody goes up, 

 somebody else wants to go down, and so the 

 apparatus is kept pretty busy. When anybody 

 wants to go upstairs he glances toward the 

 elevator. If the cage is on his floor, well and 

 good. If not, he must go down by the stairs. 

 The principle is this: As the elevator requires 

 but little power, just as many pounds of people 

 are expected to go down during the day as go 

 up. Of course, this may vary a little by what 

 one may pull on the rope or hold back on the 

 rope. Our pastor was just in; and as he weighs 

 165, he was obliged to hold back 15 pounds in 

 going down, and pull up the same weight in 

 coming up. The adjusting-weight, you see, 

 would not help anybody weighing above 1.50. 

 The inventor seems to have decided that 150 is 

 about the average weight of humanity, count- 

 ing women and children who may be likely to 

 want to use the apparatus. This morning, 

 some stones weighing about 300 pounds each 

 were needed from the basement. Two men 

 managed it very easily. A stone was placed on 

 the cage so as to rest on the brake. Then a 

 man in the basement pulled down 1.50 pounds 

 on the rope, and one on the floor above pulled 

 down also the same weight, and the stone was 

 lifted up without much trouble. Of course, 

 somebody had to hold on to the rope until the 

 stone was lifted from the brake. 



In investigating this subject a queer fact 

 seems to come out. In one sense it is not queer 

 at all, and in another it is. It is this: After 

 you get up in the morning you commence going 

 up and down, and keep going up and down 

 more or less all day long. If you weigh 150 

 pounds, that much weight is elevated by 

 strength of muscle, and let down a great many 

 times during the day; but if you sleep in ihe 

 same bed at night, the sums total of going up 

 are exactly equal to the sums total of going 

 down. You land at the same spot. Now, if 

 one could be made to balance the other, a great 

 deal of hard work would be saved; and friend 

 Williams, by his invention, does make one 

 balance the other— at least, when you go up 

 and downstairs.* For instance, it takes quite 



* Just think of it 1 You could g-o a mile big-h, and 

 down Hg-aiu, witli almost no effort at all on your 

 part, if you liad a pulley up at the top and a rope 

 thrown over it. Some of you may be sharp enougli 

 to su^jtrest tliat the rope would weig'h sometliiiig'. 

 But friend Williams has managed that part of it. 

 No matter whetlier the cage is at the top or bottom, 

 the amount of rope on one side is just equal, and 



a little power to lift 1.50 pounds up two or three 

 flights of stairs; and the way we work it, it usu- 

 ally takes almost as much extirtion, and some- 

 times I think ii more fatiguing exertion, to go 

 downstairs than to climb up. Our juvenile 

 friends sometimes cut off a part of going doivn- 

 stairs by sliding down the banisters. Well, 

 now, this invention not only cuts ofl" the labor 

 of walking upstairs, but ii stores up the force 

 you expend, and saves it until the same force 

 you exerted in going down will at some future 

 time during the day lift you up. When I go 

 down 30 feet with this new elevator, I raise that 

 big weight up just as many feet as I come 

 down, and there it remains suspended just un- 

 der the roof until I want to go up again. Then 

 it does all the lifting, and does not cost any 

 thing. You have heard people tell about mak- 

 ing one hand wash the other. Well, this new 

 elevator does that very thing. I told you my 

 new invention of the exhaust steam had re- 

 sulted in a storage battery for heat. Well, 

 friend Williams has now a storage battery for 

 muscular force. Why, yes; you can sit in ai 

 easy-chair, if you choose, and in going down 

 from the attic to the basement you develop 

 quite a quantity of muscular force that remains 

 stored up in that big iron weight until you wish 

 to use it in going up. We store up electricity 

 in storage batteries — yes, enough of it so that 

 they run street-cars by the force stored up: 

 and we are storing up the heat contained in 

 the exhaust steam, and saving this to warm 

 our houses nights and Sundays when there is 

 not any steam escaping. Finally, we are stor- 

 ing up the force developed while we go down- 

 stairs: and, mind you, the going downstairs 

 can be done in an easy-chair besides; and then 

 this force lifts us up at some other time. Per- 

 haps it will not always be done with big iron 

 weights. I have thought of having a big tank, 

 say upon the roof. Every time anybody goes 

 down the elevator it lifts a lot of water which 

 is potired into the tank. If the goings up do 

 not happen to exactly balance the comings 

 down, then we will have a pump to reinforce 

 the water needed in the tank; and we need a 

 little more too, you know, to overcome friction; 

 yet with the bail bearings that we have on our 

 wheels, and all these other things to reduce 

 friction, it will not take very much. And, by 

 the way, if the force developed in riding down 

 hill on a wheel could be properly stored up it 

 would go a great way toward carrying you to 

 the top of the next hill: and we do this already 

 to a certain extent by riding down hill at such 

 speed that we acquire almost enough momen- 

 tum to carry us to the top of the next hill. 

 Now, who comes next in this business of storing 

 up natural forces — the waste forces, if you 

 choose, that are being set loose all around us ? 

 The above apparatus costs from $100 to ?300, 

 according to the distance up and down it has 

 to travel; and after one has climbed stairs un- 

 til he is pretty well used up by the operation, 

 he is prepared to appreciate the invention. It 

 is manufactured by the Self-lifting Elevator 

 Co., Delphos, O. 



tlierefore just balances tlie amount of rope on the 

 otlier. Such an arrangement could be put up on 

 tlie Washington Monument, at Niagai'a Falls, or 

 even at the Yosemite, Cal.. or in the Grand Canyon 

 of the Colorado; and it would be as much fun for 

 a visitor to tiy from top to l)ottom. and vice versa, as 

 to ride a wheel. Whj-, if I could have a steam-engine 

 to pull me up just as well as not, I should greatly 

 prefer to grasp tliat rope and spin myself up. Tliere 

 is no limit to your speed, except the rapidity with 

 which you can put one hand at)ove another on the 

 rope. Wliy has not some enterprising Yankee 

 thought of it before, and rigged up such a tiling, 

 chaiging admittance for the privilege of flying up 

 and down as fast as you please ? 



