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The Riblet Tramway Company was a leading chairlift manufacturer for many years and was also associated with the iconic insert grip (clip).
Given is a partial history with other ropeway milestones to give the readers a deeper view of the ropeway industry in this time period.
The dates and name references should be viewed as starting points for additional history investigation and should not be taken as exact references...
1400s DaVinci tests different wire – based on failures he suggests multiwire “strands” will offer higher strength capabilities.
1400-wire-test.jpg (98.17K)
Number of downloads: 55
1806 Larger gears powering a large rope winch are shown on an elevated terminal... William Lester (British) shows this geared ropeway hoist powered by horses, portable in the sense that the legs are adjustable, has clutch in the system (not shown but described) text: machine to convert rotary power in mines...almost looks like a modern drive terminal.
1806-Lester.jpg (98.96K)
Number of downloads: 67
1814 Scottish civil engineer and bridge builder Thomas Telford investigates catenary spans with variable weights and wire diameters. In this picture notice the angled end terminals and the tension counterweight much like a typical ropeway. Telford is associated with over 20 bridge designs or builds.
1814-Telford-testing.jpg (166.18K)
Number of downloads: 64
1824 Early documented application of calculus by Marc Seguin and his brother is used to “engineer” the tower support “reaction forces” and loads at each point of the spans of an early iron “parallel strand” or parallel wire suspension bridges in France. Telford was building a suspension bridge (iron bars not wirerope) at this time, calculus was used by another engineer to persuade him to change parts of his empirical design which he considered better to be designed as artistic.
Calculus-the-first.jpg (98.67K)
Number of downloads: 53
Parallel strands are still used to this day in bridges along with calculus ropeways. Seguin no-doubt copied the geared endless loop hoists used by Italian constructors in the 1400s to “pull” those wires into place. A ropeway to construct a ropeway...shown is a geared hoist from the 1440s.
1430-Hoist.jpg (97.31K)
Number of downloads: 53
Construction ropeway to be used for laying suspension wires for the Golden Gate bridge 1936 – picture courtesy of AP
Golden-Gate-wire-spinning.jpg (77.61K)
Number of downloads: 64
Typical Seguin bridge built in 1844.
Seguin-1844.jpg (99.13K)
Number of downloads: 62
1824 Wire rope use is documented powering an Italian mine’s inclined hoist.
1830s Wire rope is substituted for iron chain (chain substituted the quick to rot manila rope) in German and British mines – both are also spliced for an endless loop or to extend the rope. An earlier use (1760) of iron rope (this was quite crude by today’s standards) can also be found with the British Navy and their substitution of chain in ship lightning rods. The “iron age” revolution spurs the quality and quantity of “iron-rope”. Typical iron chain of the day.
Brunel-ship-and-chain-hoist.jpg (178.39K)
Number of downloads: 20
1838s Andrew Smith tests wire-rope against manila rope (see Telford above), tests iron wire for lightning protection on British ships.
1830s A very smart American engineer (later to become an industrialist) Peter Cooper builds a wire ropeway to more efficiently move earth to fill-in some swampy land he just purchased near Baltimore Maryland – this scheme is surely very similar to Adam Wybe’s 1640 construction (rope) ropeway.
Adam Wybe History.pdf (405.83K)
Number of downloads: 8
1839 A wirerope factory opens in Sweden
1844 British engineering literature document use of wire that was 6x6 (six strands of six wires each) 3” in diameter for a quarry.
1848 Industrialist Peter Cooper in an interview to capture some of his company’s history describes ropeways he built to move iron ore – this one is dated to around 1848
...Some years after, I desired to transport iron ore from the mines that I
then owned to some bloomery fires that had been erected on the property before
the Revolutionary War and, in order to pass this ore down to the bloomery fires
by its own weight, I erected triangles about two hundred feet apart through a
very stony, rough gorge in the mountain, and by having long arms to this long
triangle that I placed in the valley, these triangles were intended to support
a continuous wire of some six miles in length. This wire was about five-sixteenths
of an inch in diameter. This wire was supported the whole line,
about two hundred feet, with grooved wheels to sustain the wire, and then I
placed buckets fastened to this wire about every certain distance apart, and
these buckets were intended, as the thing was revolving as they came along by
the heaps of ore with men standing ready, to throw the lumps of ore into these
buckets and their own weight would cause the thing to move and carry the iron
ore down to these bloomery fires. This thing was erected some sixteen or
eighteen years ago, and after I had erected that I found almost right away that
I had no use for them. The method of making iron blooms had so changed that it
was found we could make iron ore much cheaper by running the ore through a
blast furnace than it could be made in the bloomery fire. It was never used
only just sufficient to test it and show that it would go. Since that time
certain persons have patented the same thing in Europe and it has been adopted
in a great many places for a great variety of purposes for transporting
different things from one place to another, and I have been so told that they
carry things sixty miles in England, and more--the same thing that I had made
and never patented some twenty-two years ago...
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Cooper has a number of ropeways and treats these as mere tools to assist with more efficient iron production. Cooper also designed one of the first powered railway engines in the growing United States. Also invented Jello...no really.
Next: Smith and Smith Jr. some other Countries and the Riblets – yes more than one.
