This is the memory palace. I'm Nate de Mayo.

Elevators are old. They would have to be because it is in our nature, right?

To rise. So history, even ancient history, is thick with things that lift

other things, ropes and platforms and weights and pulleys with people to pull

them. When the slaves of Rome were served up to the wild beasts at the

Coliseum, other slaves pushed the wheels that pulled the ropes that lifted the

platforms that sent them up from the darkness below ground, up into the sun and

the roar of the crowd and of the lions. In China and Hungary and Mollse Michel,

one can find monks and kings and courtesans and construction materials and

meals fit for queens and sorted consorts rising up. While some slave or servant

or caged animal somewhere, pulled on some rope or pushed some piece of wood

around and around and around. One man in France spent the year 1743 inside a

chimney waiting for a bell to ring so he could pull a rope through a pulley and

hoist King Louis XV up in a flying chair from the ground to his bedroom

balcony rather than have him walk up a single flight of stairs.

Elijah Otis was too sick for the family business. He was a good looking kid and

smart as a whip but he was kind of weakling and when he was 19 he moved away

from the family farm and Vermont to figure out something to do for a living,

something where he wouldn't have to exert himself, sell anything bought or

processed, process anything sold, bought or processed or lift heavy things. He

wound up in a furniture factory where he and his co-workers spent their days

sanding curves and decorative knobs into bedposts. In Otis spent his nights

...