A passionate ski mountaineer, Ernst Constam trained as an engineer in Zurich. In 1934, with a contract from a hotel owner in Davos, he designed and built the first J-bar lift. It proved wildly popular and Constam’s lift-building boomed. In 1937, a ski-racing friend suggested that it would be more sociable to ride two-by-two, and Constam introduced the T-bar. For the first time in history, the word “Single!” was shouted in a lift line. --Seth Masia