This book on wire ropes is dedicated mainly to all users of wire ropes – the construction engineers, operators and supervisors of machines and instal- tions running on wire ropes – and it is divided into three main sections. The first section deals with the different types of wire rope and their component parts, the second looks into the effects of wire ropes under tensile forces (s- tionary ropes), while the third takes a look at the wire ropes under bending and tensile force (running ropes). In addition to deriving the various tensile, bending and twisting stresses, the compression and the extensions, the book includes the findings and descriptions of a great number of detailed experiments, in particular those concerning rope endurance under—uctuating tension and bending and rope discard criteria. As far as possible, the test findings have been evaluated s- tistically so that not only the mean value but also the scattering is apparent. It has been the main concern of this book to present the methods used to calculate the most important rope quantities (rope geometry, wire stresses in the rope under tension, bending and twist, rope elasticity module, rope torque, rope efficiency, the bearable number of load cycles or bending cycles and the discard number of wire breaks, etc.) as well as to explain how they are applied by means of a large number of calculations as examples.