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Electric hoists represent their own machinery, strength, and toughness, while the stage is elegant, flowing, and soft, with conflicts and collisions between the two.

Opera House Hand Chain Hoist

Time：2025-09-01

Brief Explanation :

The opera house hand chain hoist is a type of manual lifting machinery used for hoisting stage equipment in opera houses, featuring characteristics such as safety, reliability and flexible operation.

Category : Stage Chain Hoist Series

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Product Details

After completing its technical iteration in the mid-to-late 19th century, the opera house hand chain hoist quickly became a core equipment for revolutionizing the stage operation mode in European and American theaters. This mechanical device, which integrates gear transmission and chain lifting technology, marked its maturity with the popularization of the self-locking ratchet structure. When the operator stops pulling the chain, the heavy object can immediately hover at the specified height. This feature completely solved the safety hazard caused by inertial slipping of traditional lifting tools, clearing the way for its large-scale application in theater scenarios.

In the large theaters of London's West End and New York's Broadway, the configuration of opera house hand chain hoists showed distinct professional characteristics. In the 1890s, the Royal Theatre on Drury Lane in London had 4 customized hand chain hoists embedded in its side stage truss system. Each was equipped with a 12-meter-long forged chain and had a lifting capacity of 500 kilograms, specially used for hoisting the 2-ton iron curtain track. The Metropolitan Opera in New York innovatively combined the hoists with pulley blocks and, through a multi-machine linkage control system, realized the diagonal movement of backdrops in the 20-meter-high stage space. This technology successfully created the shocking scene of Mephistopheles falling from the clouds in the 1896 performance of Faust.

The reliance of touring troupes on portable hand chain hoists further highlighted the revolutionary significance of this invention. At that time, the famous American "Barnum & Bailey Circus" always carried 6 foldable hand chain hoists on its tour trains. Their cast iron shells were specially lightweighted, and after removing the handles, they could be packed into special wooden boxes, which could be easily transported through the narrow passages at the backstage of theaters. When the circus performed in a small town in the Midwest in 1898, only 3 workers and 2 opera house hand chain hoists completed the construction and fixation of the elephant performance platform within 4 hours, which previously required a 10-person team to spend a whole day.

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