Lifting loads by mechanical means goes back at least to the Romans who used primitive hoists operated by human, animal, or water power during their ambitious building projects.

An Machine Room Less Elevator employing a counterweight is said to have been built in the seventeenth century by a Frenchman named Velayer. It was also in that country that a passenger elevator was built in 1743 at the Versailles Palace for King Louis XV.

By 1800, steam power was used to power such lift devices, and in 1830, several European factories were operating with hydraulic elevators that were pushed up and down by a plunger that worked in and out of a cylinder.

All of these lifting systems were based on the principle of the counterweight, by which the weight of one object is used to balance the weight of another object.

For example, while it may be very difficult to pull up a heavy object using only a rope tied to it, this job can be made very easy if a weight is attached to the other end of the rope and hung over a pulley. This other weight, or counterweight, balances the first and makes it easy to pull up.

Thus, an elevator, which uses the counterweight system, never has to pull up the total weight of its load, but only the difference between the load-weight and that of the counter-weight.

Counterweights are also found inside the sash of old-style windows, in grandfather clocks, and in dumbwaiters.