Louis-Philippe installed a lift at Fontainebleau for his sister Maria Adelaide in 1840

If you too fell for the gossip that Louis-Philippe was a nasty piece of work and a scoundrel, perhaps this charming lift, which he devised and installed at the Château de Fontainebleau in 1840 for his elderly sister, will make you think again. Then again, even scoundrels love their kin, though it is actually written of Louis-Philippe that he was a good monarch, a brave soldier and a solicitous master of the house. In those years lifts did not exist at all, but old Marie Adélaïde of Orléans was a very frail little woman who could barely get about the château, and to ease her passage between apartments on different floors her attentive elder brother had this unpretentious contraption built. A remarkable and touching testimony to court life. Contemporaries called the lift something like the "swift or flying chair"; it was set in motion by the efforts of a single servant, who turned a cogwheel beneath the staircase. For a full seven years Madame Adélaïde made use of this marvel of technology and thanked heaven for her splendid brother