In one form or another, elevators date to the third ceuntury B.C., although the most famous may have been one installed at Versailles in 1743 so King Louis XV of France could consort more easily with his mistress who lived one flight up.
More often than not, they were originally built for freight, lifted by animals and humans (an easier task when counterweights were included) and later by steam, by hydraulic power pushing a piston, and by electricity. Elisha Otis didn't invent the elevator, but he made it safe enough for everyday use. Without his safety brake, skyscrapers never would have been practical.
The Vermont-born inventor was working as a mechanic for Josiah Maize's bedstead company in nearby Yonkers when he began tinkering with a hoisting device that could lift heavy machinery to the upper floor of Maize & Burns's factory. He devised an "improvement in hoisting apparatus elevator brake," not the most flashy-sounding invention, but one that revolutionized urban development.
Among those who realized its potential was P. T. Barnum, the museum, circus, and theatrical impresario, who was president of the Crystal Palace in what is now Bryant Park. In 1854, during the Exposition of the Industry of All Nations, he introduced "the first elevator wherein provision was made for stopping the fall of the car in the contingency of the breaking of the hoisting cables." In a death-defying demonstration of vertical engineering beneath the Crystal Palace's hundred-foot diameter dome, Otis had himself hoisted to the top of the building, where he dramatically ordered an assistant to sever the elevator cables with a saber. Crowds screamed as the car dropped for a few seconds. But instead of plummeting to the floor, the cab was safely stopped by a spring-loaded mechanism that meshed with the sawtoothed guide rails flanking the shaft. "All safe, ladies and gentlemen," he reassured the crowd. "All safe.
In 1857 Elisha Otis and the Otis Elevator Company began manufacturing passenger elevators. The first public elevator, a steam-powered hydraulic passenger model, was installed on March 23, 1857, by Otis in the live-story cast-iron E.V. Haughwout & Co. department store at Broome Street and Broadway in what is now Solo. While the building was under eighty feet tall, Eder V. Haughwout figured, correctly, that an innovative elevator would attract curious customers. United States Patent No. 31,128 was issued less than three months before Otis died in 1861.
In 1870 the 130-foot-high steel-framed and elevator-equipped Equitable Building, at 120 Broadway, ushered in the skyscraper era and the vertical city. Otis became a brand name, and the company's elevators were installed in landmarks that included the Eiffel Tower, the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building. In 1899 the company introduced the moving stairs, known as the escalator, drawing on the work of several inventors, including Jesse W. Reno, whose "endless conveyor" or "inclined elevator" was installed at the Old Iron Pier at Coney Island in 1896 and later that year on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.
TEXT FROM SAM ROBERTS 101 OBJECTS
