The origin of stairlifts
Most historians believe that residential stairlifts in the UK date back to the 1920s. A Pennsylvanian entrepreneur named CC Crispen needed a method of getting his friend, who suffered from polio, from floor to floor.
Crispen designed a seat that would enable his friend to travel up stairs. He was an engineer, and was able to build a prototype of the chair lift, which he called the Inclinator.
But Crispen might be disappointed to learn that he could have been beaten to the residential stairlift starting line in the UK by none other than King Henry VIII. Historian Dr David Starkey found a list of the king’s possessions that included a stairlift. After he was injured while jousting, the 30-stone king devised a chair that his servants could haul up the stairs using a block-and-tackle system.
Dr Starkey called the stairlift a ‘stairthrone’, although Royal records describe it as ‘a chair…that goeth up and down’. The stair-lift is believed to have been operational at Whitehall Palace in London, which had a 20-foot staircase.
For impartial advice about stairlifts from UK Stairlifts, click here or call on 0800 002 9916. We are here from 6.30am until 11.30pm in the evening to answer your call.
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