This morning I went to my gym and did thirty minutes on the step-climber. I call it the Escalator from Hell. It combines the worst aspects of a Stairmaster with the worst aspects of a treadmill; to whit, you have to simulate walking up stairs like you would on a Stairmaster, but the pace isn’t determined by you, so you can’t slow down without reprogramming the machine. You have to stick to the machine’s pace as you would on a treadmill. So you can’t cheat. It’s brutal.
As I staggered off the machine on wobbly legs, gasping for breath, I got to thinking about who invented such devices. Turns out, treadmills (and treadwheels, as they were once called) go back thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians used them to hoist water from the Nile to irrigate their fields. The Ancient Romans used them to crush olives, and also to lift huge stones (with a treadwheel crane, known as a magna rola). Here’s a painting by Brueghel that shows workers on a treadwheel crane constructing the Tower of Babel. Can you see the workers moving the wheel from the inside?
The basic types of treadwheels were horizontal or vertical. With the horizontal types, an animal (generally a quadruped such as a horse, donkey, or ox) pushed or pulled a roller around a circular trough. The vertical type was best powered by bipeds—usually serfs, slaves, and convicts. The person would climb in place, turning the mechanism in order to pump water, grind grain, knead dough, or hoist minerals out of a mine.
The vaults and towers of many of the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe were raised by human-powered treadwheels. Large country estates and castles, which were generally built on tops of hills so the inhabitants could better defend themselves from attackers, needed treadwheels to raise water.
Treadwheels were used in prisons in Britain starting around 1818, and, a bit later, in the United States.
Major, Kenneth (1980). “The Pre-Industrial Sources of Power: Muscle Power”. History Today. Retrieved March 09, 2013.
The Use Of Treadmills In Pre-Industrial Times”. Treadmill Review Guru. Retrieved March 09, 2013.
Vogel, Steven (March, 2002). “A short history of muscle-powered machines: what goes around comes around— and does useful work”. Natural History (magazine). Retrieved March 09, 2013.sara
images:
13th century Treadmill crane By Marie Reed (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
19th century prison treadmill via Wikimedia Commons