Effects of Elevator-Riding.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 192, 19 February 1887, Page 2

Effects of Elevator-Ri ding.

Recent experiments touching the effects upon different persons of the upward and downward motion of elevators, the New York " World " ?>iya, present come curious repults. A man of 161 pounds weight atanding upon the platform of a scale placed in an elevator finds the balance indicating 174 pounds on the upward journey, and 148 duringthe descent, thus showing adifference in his weight lor the time being of twenty, six poun ds.or about 16 per cent. In this case the elevator was of ordinary speed, and in proportion as the speed was increased or diminished the change observed a corresponding alteration, the elevator moving so rapidly as to indicate neurly 40 per cent. In this we have the secret of why co many persons have a sensation of «ea 3ickness in elevators, especially after a recent meal In a great uptown store, in which the different stories are devoted to separate branches of trade, the speed of the elevator is regulated so as to save time, but so many ladies are made sea-nick by the motion they prefer the old mode of stair climbing. Standing well forward or well # aft on the deck of a ship in a heavy seaway' gives the same lifting and falling sensation as that experienced in the elevator ; but the roll of the ship is absent, so that it would seem as if sea-sickness resulted more from the upward and downward motion than the swaying of the deck away from a horizontal position. It will be remembered that the experiment of building pas-enger vessels with pendulum cabins, whose decks remained horizontal throughout the voyage, failed to avert pea-sick ne*s. All the motion was overcome excepting in the direction of the perpendicular, That disease of the sea must therefore c due to the alternating conditions of the pressure of the food in the stomach ; and as the patient recovers when the stomach has time to adjust itself to the motion and becomes proof against further attack, it is obvious that voyaging in a rapidly-moviDg elevator, in anticipation of a sea voyage, would make "old salts" of the most delicate ladies before embatking.