ETYM Latin, one who raises up, a deliverer: cf. French élévateur.
Any mechanical device for raising or lowering people or materials. It usually consists of a platform or boxlike structure suspended by motor-driven cables with safety ratchets along the sides of the shaft. US inventor Elisha Graves Otis developed the first passenger safety elevator 1852, installed 1857. This invention permitted the development of skyscrapers from the 1880s. At first steam powered the movement, but hydraulic and then electric elevators were common from the early 1900s. Elevator operators worked controls and gates within the cab until the automatic, or self-starter, was introduced.
1. A platform or cage that is raised and lowered mechanically in a vertical shaft in order to move people from one floor to another in a building; SYN. lift.
2. The control surface on the tailplane of an aircraft that makes it ascend or descend.

The square box within a scroll bar that can be moved up and down to change the position of text or an image on the screen. See the illustration. Also called: scroll box, thumb. See also scroll bar.