Prior to the revolution that would change the system of governance in France, the people had suffered under the mismanagement of King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, who, along with the aristocracy, refused to acknowledge the economic plight of the lower classes. 
Both political and socioeconomic factors contributed to the French Revolution as the ambitions of the rising bourgeoisie were allied with aggrieved peasants, wage-earners, and individuals of all classes. The influence of the ideas that rounded out the revolutionary movement, rooted in Enlightenment philosophies were also paramount to the desire for change in what was felt to be a stagnant system of government.
The King, his wife Marie Antoinette, and their children attempted to escape from Paris in 1791 after months of popular dissatisfaction and the increasing threat to the monarchy. The King and his family did not make it out of Paris and were instead captured and held in Paris and in 1792 the King was sent to the guillotine. For three years, between 1792 and 1795, a committee was established to rule the country headed by Georges-Jacques Denton, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre. They ruled in what became known as the Reign of Terror, sending thousands of Royalists to the guillotine including Marie Antoinette and other Royalists, dissidents of the Revolution, and even moderate thinkers who sought to mediate the excesses of the revolutionary movement. The Revolution succeeded in overturning generations of autocratic monarchic rule but became a symbol of excessive force and revolt without sufficient stabilizing elements to fundamentally change conditions for the French people. In 1799 a young General named Napoleon Bonaparte helped overthrow the government, called the Directory, and by 1804 had risen to such power that he etablished himself as “Napoleon I, Emperor of the French.”
History of Elevators
Elevators are a commonplace fixture in multi-story or high-rise buildings in all parts of the globe. They are often taken for granted since they have become so universally adopted but we only need to look at the history of them to see what engineering marvels they are. Early elevators were mentioned in Roman texts as being developed by Archimedes in around 236 B.C. but these were basically small cabs attached to a rope and were operated by human or animal power. Different types of elevating mechanisms were developed in the 18th and 19th century. In Russia, a man named Ivan Kulibin designed an elevator in 1793 that used a screw mechanism to raise and lower the unit. During the 19th century there were many types of elevators employed but they were very simple devices used primarily to carry cargo. They used hydraulics to operate the elevators employing a pump that would apply water pressure sent through a steel column to make the elevator ascend and descend. They used a system of counterbalances to prevent the hydraulic system from carrying the full load but it was not a practical system, especially for taller structures since the hydraulic system had to be buried in the ground as deep as the building was tall.
Elisha Otis developed the safe type of elevator we are familiar with in 1852. A set of rollers would lock the elevator into place if something happened and the elevator began to drop too fast. He gave a demonstration of it in 1854 at an exposition at New York’s Crystal Palace. Otis passenger elevators were first installed in a building on Broadway in New York. Actually, during the construction of the Cooper Union building in 1853, Cooper included an elevator shaft in his design because he was certain someone would develop a practical passenger elevator. The Otis Elevator Company (owned by United Technologies Corp.) is the largest manufacturer of elevator equipment in the world. Stairs were actually banned from new building construction in 1962 but that was soon changed as wisdom prevailed.
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Residential elevators were first created by Clarence Crispen in 1929 and he also invented the stairlift which plays a vital role in helping the elderly and the handicapped navigate stairs. So the next time you ride in an elevator, don’t be surprised if you look down and see the name Otis printed on it. | |||||||||||
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During the French Revolution one aspect of costume became particularly emblematic of the movement of the people and the upheaval of the aristocratic and bourgeois society of France at the time. This was the short pant, hemmed near the ankles, that displaced the knee-length breeches (culottes) that marked the bourgeois and aristocratic classes. The men who wore the short pant in defiance of the aristocratic fashion called themselves the sans-culotte and in their costume, in solidarity with the lower classes, wanted to personify liberty, equality, and fraternity among the people.
The sans-culottes as political activists organized themselves in sections throughout France and became militant defenders of the ideals they thought would bring about an equality for the French citizen that would end the destructiveness and division of the class system under the monarchy. The sans-culottes were mainly of the less-educated class but with the strength and organization of the revolutionary movement behind them they were able to transform French society, although at the expense of justice and civility as the Revolution progressed and the revolutionaries became more militant. By 1793, a year of terror under which revolutionary tribunals sent nearly half a million ‘enemies of the people’ to imprisonment if not to their deaths, the sans-culottes and the power of Robespierre had succeeded in establishing the Republic.
