man engines

Noun

man engine (plural man engines)

1. (historical) A mechanical lift for raising and lowering people through considerable distances; specifically (mining), a device by which miners ascend or descend in a shaft, consisting of a series of landings or sollars in the shaft and an equal number of shelves on a vertical rod which has an up and down motion equal to the distance between the successive landings. A person steps from a landing to a shelf and is raised or lowered to the next landing, upon which they then step, and so on, travelling by successive stages.
   • The man-engine was like some gigantic prehistoric monster. I'll never forget the first time I saw the man-engine at the Levant. The captain took me to the edge of the shaft and explained to me how the mechanism worked. "The wooden rod plunges, see—up, down, up, down. Up twelve feet, down twelve...1971, Susan Howatch, chapter 1, in Penmarric, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, part IV (Philip: 1914–1930: Truth and Falsehood), section 3, page 371