. Bulletin. Science. Figure 25.—Schematic diagram of the rigging of the Otis system. (Adapted from Gustave Eiffel, La Tour de Trois Cents Metres, Paris, 1900, p. 127.) apparatus was really not unlike that of an ordinary in- clined railway. Motive power was provided by the customary hydraulic cylinder (fig. 26), set on an angle roughly equal to the incline of the lower section of run. Balancing the cabin's dead weight was a counterpoise carriage (fig. 27) loaded with pig iron that traveled on a second set of rails beneath the main track. Like the driving system, the counterweight was rope-geare
. Bulletin. Science. Figure 25.—Schematic diagram of the rigging of the Otis system. (Adapted from Gustave Eiffel, La Tour de Trois Cents Metres, Paris, 1900, p. 127.) apparatus was really not unlike that of an ordinary in- clined railway. Motive power was provided by the customary hydraulic cylinder (fig. 26), set on an angle roughly equal to the incline of the lower section of run. Balancing the cabin's dead weight was a counterpoise carriage (fig. 27) loaded with pig iron that traveled on a second set of rails beneath the main track. Like the driving system, the counterweight was rope-geared, 3 to 1, so that its travel was about 125 feet to the cabin's 377 feet. Everything about the system was on a scale far heavier than found in the normal elevator of the type. The cylinder, of 38-inch bore, was 36 feet long. Rather than a simple nest of pulleys, the piston rods pulled a large guided carriage or "chariot" bearing six movable sheaves (fig. 28). Corresponding were five stationary sheaves, the whole reeved to form an immense 12-purchase tackle. The car, attached to the free ends of the cables, was hauled up as the piston drew the two sheave assemblies apart. In examining the system, it is difficult to determine what single element in its design might have caused such a problem as to have been beyond the engineer- ing ability of a French firm, and to have caused such concern to a large, well-established American organ- ization of Otis' wide elevator and inclined railway- experience. Indeed, when the French system— which served the first platform from the east and west legs—is examined, it appears curious that a national technology capable of producing a machine at such a level of complexity should have been unable to deal easily with the entire matter. This can be plausibly explained only on the basis of Europe's previously mentioned lack of experience with rope- geared and other cable-hung elevator systems. The difficulty attending Otis' work, usual
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