lift

Mechanical device for raising or lowering people or goods vertically between the floors of a building. The US inventor Elisha Graves Otis developed the first passenger lift in 1852, installed in 1857. The invention of the lift allowed the development of the skyscraper from the 1880s.

A lift usually consists of a platform or boxlike structure suspended by motor-driven cables with safety ratchets along the sides of the shaft. At first lifts were worked hydraulically with a counterweight. Electric lifts were common from the early 1900s. Lift operators worked controls and gates until lifts became automatic.