MATERIAL HANDLING

The first operative wire ropes of the modern era, employed in vertical shafts as hoisting cables in the Harz Mountain silver mines of Germany from 1834 to 1854, were not very complicated inventions. Three lengths of wrought-iron wire, all the same size, were twisted around each other by hand to make a strand. Next, three or four identical strands were twisted around each other in a similar manner to make a rope. The process was similar to prehistoric techniques for making ropes of hemp fibers

These handmade ropes, known as Albert Ropes (after William Albert, the Harz mining official who pioneered the practice) were not very flexible because the wires were relatively large and stiff. But, they gave good service compared to chains or hemp ropes, where large hoists, drums, and sheaves were in use. Chains tended to part without warning, and hemp rope rotted in the damp mineshafts. Unfortunately, the tedious process of making Albert Ropes discouraged trials in other applications. Several versions were tested, but none contained an internal core for support of the outer strands. First attempted in 1834, they were abandoned after the 1850s

Meanwhile, at the same time the Germans were achieving wire rope success in the Harz mines, a London inventor named Andrew Smith was experimenting with various ways to apply wire ropes to ship's rigging. He manufactured several kinds of wire rope for this purpose, using the ropewalk techniques of the hemp cordage industry. In 1840, a new rapid transit system known as the Blackwall Railroad opened for business in London. Smith substituted his wire ropes for the hemp haulage on the Blackwall Railroad

In the meantime, another Englishman, Robert Newall, learned about the Albert ropes. He devised a way to make wire ropes in a factory using machinery rather than the hand-twisting method. His ropes were tested with success on the Blackwall Railroad, but Smith opposed Newall's efforts during a patent fight in the mid-1840s, in which Newall prevailed. The companies established by Smith and Newall later merged, remaining in business to the present

Smith soon left England for California and the Gold Rush. Newall's style of wire rope--comprised of six strands, each containing its own fiber core, all twisted around a central fiber core--soon dominated the English market. Their major English contribution to the industry, however, was the idea of making strands on a machine known as a strander

Word about the English and German experiments spread quickly to the United States. Prior to the advent of the high-pressure steam locomotive, the early railroads overcame higher elevations with a combination of hemp rope hoists and gravity descent, operated much like a modern ski-lift system

In Pennsylvania, a cross-country transportation system known as the Allegheny Portage RR agreed to test a handmade wire rope in 1842 as a substitute for hemp ropes, which tended to rot after little more than one year of service. The test was a success, so the Portage converted to wire ropes. The new wire ropes attracted attention at the Morris Transportation System in New Jersey, and at several anthracite coal transportation companies including the Delaware & Hudson Co. in New York and the Lehigh Co. in Pennsylvania. These wire ropes were made by a surveyor named John Roebling. Although he twisted the wires together by hand, like the Albert ropes, he adopted the six-strand-plus-core arrangement favored by Smith and Newall. Roebling's ropes, however, were made entirely of wire, utilizing a core that was identical to the six outer strands, each comprised of 19 wires.