Wire Rope

Wire rope is a length of steel cable made by twisting multiple wire strands, each itself made of twisted individual wires, around a central core, producing a flexible yet very strong cable used for hoisting, hauling and structural support. The German mining engineer Wilhelm Albert developed the first wire rope in 1834 at the Clausthal mines in the Harz Mountains, replacing the hemp ropes and iron chains then used to hoist ore and miners, which were prone to sudden, catastrophic failure, with a cable whose many individual wires could each fail gradually and visibly before the whole rope gave way. Wire rope's combination of strength, flexibility and gradual, inspectable failure made it essential to nineteenth and twentieth century mining, shipping, elevators, and the suspension cables of major bridges.