Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
html
The sky is the limit: human powered cranes and lifting devices
From the earliest civilisations right up to the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans used sheer
muscle power, organisation skills and ingenious mechanics to lift weights that would be impossible to
handle by most power cranes in operation today.
required to operate them remained very high. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, just
before steam power took over, human powered lifting devices became so elaborate that one man could
lift a 15 tonne truck in no time, using only one hand.
Mechanical advantage
Any lifting device has a certain mechanical advantage (MA), the factor by which it multiplies the input
force into an output force. A lower input force must always be applied over a greater distance than the
greater output force travels, and the ratio of the distances is the velocity ratio (VR). In theory, the
mechanical advantage (MA) = the velocity ratio (VR), so that in a machine with a mechanical
advantage of 2 to 1, the input force is half the output force but must be exerted over twice the distance.
In practice, friction always reduces the ideal mechanical advantage of a machine. (source).
Although some think that the Egyptians had more sophisticated lifting
machinery at their disposal (illustration below), most historians agree that the Egyptians made use of
only the most simple lifting devices: inclined planes (ramps, illustrations below, on the right) and levers
(the principle of a seesaw or teeter-totter, illustration on the right). Ramps were (probably) also used to
raise obelisks.
By moving an object up a ramp rather than completely vertical, the amount of force required is reduced
at the expense of increasing the distance it must travel. The mechanical advantage of an inclined plane
equals the length divided by the height of the slope. The mechanical advantage of a lever is the distance
between the fulcrum and the point where the force is applied, divided by the distance between the
fulcrum and the weight to be lifted.
Treadwheels
An even more powerful lifting aid than the winch or capstan was the treadwheel. It was first mentioned
in 230 BC and it remained a very important element of cranes up until the second half of the 19th
century. Treadwheels, which usually had a diameter of 4 to 5 metres, have a greater mechanical
advantage than winches or capstans, because of the larger radius of the wheel compared to the radius of
the axle. Moreover, the power generated by a person's arm and shoulder is replaced by the greater
power of a person walking (not running) within the wheel. A treadwheel with a wheel radius of 7 feet
(213 cm) and a drum radius of 0.5 feet (15 cm) has a mechanical advantage of 14 to one. This concerns
a treadwheel with a diameter of 456 centimetres: 2 x 213 cm radius of the wheel + 2 x 15 cm radius of
the drum (diameter = 2 x radius). (source).
With a mechanical
advantage of 14 to one, one man in a treadwheel operating a Pentaspastos and exerting a force of 50
kilograms could thus lift a load of 3500 kilogram or 3.5 tonnes. That's about 70 times more than he
could lift with a simple pulley.
Some cranes (especially the harbour cranes from the middle ages and onwards) were equipped with
two treadwheels attached to the same axle, bringing the total lifting power of a human powered crane to
some 7,000 kilograms or 7 tonnes. Because many treadwheels were also wide enough for two people
walking side by side, a crane with two treadwheels could be powered by 4 people, which brings the
maximum lifting power at 14 tonnes - comparable to that of a common modern tower crane. Even
taking into account a loss of 20 percent due to friction, this is still 11.2 tonnes. (picture credit).
Lifting towers
While the lifting capacity of a ancient treadwheel crane is impressive, attentive readers will have
noticed that Roman buildings contained stone blocks that were considerably heavier than that. The
Romans also shipped a few dozens of obelisks from Egypt and re-erected them in their cities - the
heaviest of these weighing more than 500 tonnes. How did they manage this with 6 or 12 ton cranes?
Basically, in the same way that we handle very heavy loads, by combining multiple lifting devices.
One method was to build a gigantic lifting tower powered by multiple capstans on the ground.
Although the mechanical advantage of a capstan is considerably lower than that of a treadwheel, they
could be powered by much more people and so less machines would be needed. Moreover, they
allowed for the auxiliary power of draft animals.The method of lifting towers is briefly mentioned by
some Roman authors, but detailed information about it comes from an engineer who lived 1000 years
later: Domenic Fontana, master builder of the Vatican.
In 1586, Pope Sixtus V decided that the 344 ton obelisk at the Circus
Maximus had to move to the square in front of the newly built Saint Peter's Basilica. A mere 256
metres further, but nevertheless the huge stone had to be lowered, transported, and erected again.
Luckily, a few treadwheel cranes have been preserved, all of them in the attics of churches and
cathedrals. Large cranes were an absolute necessity in the building of the gothic churches in the late
Middle Ages, buildings that were much higher than even the tallest Roman monuments. Furthermore,
the working area on these sites was rather limited compared to Roman conditions, and both factors led
to a different use of cranes.
Another well described medieval lifting device is the large treadwheel slewing
crane that stood on top of the 157 metre high Cologne Cathedral in Germany for almost 450 years (on
the right, source). It was erected in 1400 and dismantled only in 1842. The crane housed two
treadwheels, was 15.7 metres high and had a 15.4 metre long jib which could traverse the entire
working area - basically functioning like a modern tower crane.
Harbour cranes
A new development in the Middle Ages was the stationary harbour crane, powered by treadwheels. It
was not used by the Greeks or the Romans, possibly because they had a large enough reservoir of slave
labour at their disposal. The Roman standard shipping container, the amphora, was rather small and
could easily and rapidly be loaded and unloaded using a human conveyor belt and a ramp (source).
Built by millwrights
Dockside treadwheel cranes were frequently capped by a wooden roof to protect the mechanics and the
workers from the rain. These permanent structures had much in common with windmills, and they were
most probably built by the same craftsmen.
Analogous to post windmills and tower windmills, there were post cranes and
tower cranes: the former were wooden structures which pivoted on a central vertical axle, the latter
(mostly built in Germany) were masonry towers with only the cap and the jib arm rotating.
Harbour cranes were not adopted in Southern Europe and their total number in the whole of medieval
Europe was rather limited compared to the number of windmills: about one hundred large harbour
cranes have been discovered (source). Around a dozen of them are still standing.
Iron cranes
In the 19th century, three important innovations appeared. The first one was the use of iron instead of
wood structures and gearings, which made cranes stronger and more efficient. The first cast iron crane
was constructed in 1834. That same year, the wire rope was invented, a much stronger alternative to the
natural fibre rope or the metal chain. Finally, in 1851, the third game-changing innovation appeared:
the steam-powered crane. With the arrival of steam power, any load could be lifted at any speed, as
Wire rope was soon in widespread use, but the other two innovations only caught
on slowly. Wood, sometimes combined with iron, continued to be the material of choice for many
cranes well into the twentieth century, especially in regions where timber was plentiful. And while
more and more steam cranes appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century, hand-powered
cranes kept being sold and used in large amounts. A book on crane technology, published in 1904, still
devoted half of its pages to manually operated cranes. Bicycle cranes were sold, too (picture on the
right, source).
Logically, it was also this era that produced the most powerful muscle powered cranes ever designed:
those composed of iron structures and gearworks, using wire ropes, but not yet powered by steam. One
peculiar example of this intermediate technology is shown above: a 1843 hand driven gantry crane for
transferring carriages. Equally interesting, though made entirely of wood, are these early 1900's
treadwheel cranes in the Netherlands, used to haul up boats over land (picture below).
A mechanical advantage of 632 to 1 means that each of the four men had to apply a force of only 23.7
kilograms in order to lift a weight of 60 tonnes - and this while operating a winch instead of a more
efficient treadwheel.
The most powerful crane in the world today (since September 2009) has a lifting capacity of 20,000
tonnes. If it would be equipped with a gear system offering the same mechanical advantage as that of
the above described Fairbairn crane, a weight of 20,000 tonnes could be lifted by 1,265 men each
exerting 25 kilograms of power. This is comparable to the workforce that was required to lift the 340
tonne obelisk in the 16th century. And of course, there is no doubt that we could further improve upon
the 19th century gearwork and make the mechanical advantage even higher.
We could lift anything without fossil fuels. Nevertheless, apart from their use by some hardcore
ecological architects, human powered cranes have completely disappeared, even for the lightest of
loads. We prefer lifting things with power machinery and we run (not walk) on a treadmill in the gym
to keep in shape.
Kris De Decker (edited by Vincent Grosjean)
"The History of Cranes (The Classic Construction Series) ", Oliver Bachmann (1997). This book
gives a detailed overview of lifting devices from the earliest times to the end of the 20th
century. It also showed me the way to many great pictures.
"The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World ", John Peter
Oleson (2008). Here I found most of the information on the mechanical advantage of lifting
devices.
"Medieval treadwheels: artists' views of building construction", Andrea L. Matthies (1992). This
study gives an informed look at medieval treadwheel cranes, inluding how to calculate the
Related articles :