People who live in high-rise apartments are reminded of the importance of elevators when they are inconvenienced by elevator maintenance notices. Elevators use the principle of pulleys to move people up and down high floors with little effort, and with more than 20 safety features, accidents are almost impossible. In particular, future elevators will be able to travel not only vertically but also horizontally, and NASA is planning an elevator that will go to space.
If you’ve ever lived in a high-rise apartment building, you’ve probably experienced the inconvenience of an “elevator inspection” notice a few times a year. That’s when we become acutely aware of the importance of elevators. Without an elevator, going up and down even a few floors would be a huge hassle, and if you need to carry something or urgently transport a patient, it could be quite a challenge. Especially in this age of skyscrapers, elevators are more than just a convenience; they are a key element of architectural design and building management. Without the invention of the elevator, we wouldn’t have the skyscrapers that are now popping up in many countries around the world.
The invention of the elevator can also be seen as a symbol of scientific and technological progress. The human desire to climb to higher heights has been a constant throughout history, and in the beginning, we simply traveled by stairs, but gradually, with the help of mechanical devices. This is how the modern elevator was born. Elevators use the principle of pulleys. In the old days, in order to easily draw water from a well, a wheel was suspended from the ceiling, a rope was attached to it, and a gourd was attached to one end of the rope and a handle to the other. If you pull on the rope with the handle, you’ll notice that the gourd attached to the other end of the rope moves up and down. This is a fixed pulley.
But how does this principle work in an elevator? To understand this, we first need to understand the structure of an elevator. In an elevator, the enclosed space where passengers board is called the car. The top ceiling of the elevator shaft, where the elevator travels, contains a fixed pulley and an electric motor. The fixed pulley has a steel rope attached to it, with the car at one end and a counterweight similar to the weight of the elevator without people on board at the other end. An electric motor in the ceiling winds the rope to move the car up and down. If the rope were a fixed pulley, like a gourd in a well, it would take a lot of force to wind the rope, but because the counterweight is suspended from the rope on the other side of the car, the car can move up and down with little effort.
An elevator is not just a device that moves people, but a complex system that includes a variety of safety devices and scientific principles. Horror movies often show people falling from elevators because the rope breaks or the elevator malfunctions and causes an accident. In real life, some people are afraid to ride in elevators for fear of accidents. However, the chances of this happening in real life are almost zero. This is because elevators have more than 20 different safety devices built into them.
First of all, the ropes used in elevators are made of 30 strands of steel wire, which are combined into six to eight bundles, and have the strength to withstand 12 times the weight of the elevator at full capacity. This means that unless the rope is artificially broken, there is little risk of it breaking. Even if the rope breaks due to wear and tear or corrosion, it won’t send the elevator into freefall. If the car’s descent speed accelerates and exceeds 1.3 times the design speed, the power is automatically cut off, and if it exceeds 1.4 times the design speed, the emergency stop device is activated to stop the car by biting the rail directly. However, in the unlikely event that the elevator does free fall, the floor of the elevator shaft is cushioned by shock absorbers to soften the impact. Thanks to these multi-layered safeguards, people can travel without fear, even on the highest floors of buildings.
As the arteries of a building that transport people to each floor, elevators will only get better as more and more skyscrapers are built. The elevator technology of the future is expected to be even more innovative than today. Some of the elevators that scientists are currently working on include elevators that travel along rails without ropes, like a train moving vertically, or elevators that travel horizontally. These elevators will play an important role not only in traveling in skyscrapers, but also in realizing the concept of large-scale vertical cities. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is also planning to install an elevator that will go to space to transport spacecraft. After launching the satellite, a 96,000-kilometer train track will be installed to connect it to Earth. We look forward to the day when the scene from Roald Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Giant Glass Elevator becomes a reality.
