Although the Egyptians first used elevation systems powered by human and hydraulic energy more than four thousand years ago, the construction of the first lift is attributed to Archimedes, in the year 236 B.C.

Archimedes used a rope, pulley and counterweight design for the first time ever to elevate loads, with the help of studies on refactoring and levers. However, several centuries had yet to pass before it was possible to use a device based on principles, (such as a lift).


This occurred in the year 80 A.D. The construction of the Coliseum in Rome during the reign of the emperor Titus, with an underground area where beasts, criminals and gladiators had to wait before coming out to the arena, made it necessary to design huge elevation platforms (which could hold more than one hundred men) to raise them to the upper floor. These were most certainly the first lifts with modern features.

In the 19th century the invention of the locomotive made it possible to construct elevation platforms that for the first time ever did not require animal or hydraulic energy. This type of lift was rapidly adopted in industry, especially in the mining industry, one of the sectors in which it was of vital importance for the fast, safe transporting of loads and persons from great depths.

For many years, until the middle of the century, elevation systems based on pulleys and counterweights and hydraulic systems that used water under pressure to push a piston that ran through a cylinder and the force of gravity for lowering vied with each other. The advantage of the simplicity of the pulleys system was made up for by the safety of the hydraulic system, in which a failure rarely had any catastrophic consequences.

In 1853, an inventor by the name of Elisha Otis developed a safety system based on ratchets that stopped the lift or elevation platform in the event of a cable breaking. This invention, together with the introduction of the electric motor in designing lifts, by the German engineer Werner Von Siemens, led to the construction of lifts, and with it, buildings that became taller and taller. This concentration of resources that arose thanks to vertical construction eventually changed the physiognomy of the most important cities, and was a decisive factor in the development of modern market economies.