Nowadays with a gasoline motor and a pump we can do about anything.
But in the old days, and not so old days, there were no gasoline motors.
Inventors tried to come up with some other way, for example, to lift water up to a castle from a river down in the valley. A way that would use the current of the river to push the water up the hill.
The Italian inventor Gianello Torriano found one and became justly famous for it. In about 1565 he brought water to the Royal Alcázar of Toledo, 100 meters above the Tagus River.
The castle (Alcázar) of Toledo (top right), with the Tagus River below
It is on record that he did it; but the device was long ago destroyed and has to be re-constructed from guesses. The most widely accepted design is the one proposed by Ladislao Reti, based on fragments of contemporary descriptions:
“A large water wheel powered a revolving belt with buckets or amphora that transported water to the top of a tower. When the buckets reached the top of the tower they would upend pouring the water into a small tank from where it would travel down to a smaller tower via a pipe. A second water wheel provided mechanical power to pumps that drove a series of cups mounted on arms inside the second tower. The arms of the cups were hollow with an opening at the end which allowed water to run down inside the arm and out of the opposite end. A see-sawing motion of the arms lifted the water to successive levels in the cups. Once the final level was reached the water flowed down a second pipe to a third tower which contained further cups on arms and was also activated by the mechanical power derived from the second water wheel. This final tower raised the water high enough to allow it to flow into the storage tanks at the Alcázar.” (Wikipedia)
By 1568 the machine was delivering around 14,100 liters a day to the Alcázar and the entire city above.
..
WOW, I am REALLY impressed!!!