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Elisha Otis Elevator Demonstration
1 2017-12-19T19:37:15-08:00 Ray Li d76adcdbc48db5fec180c24315aed43f8b9d5f75 14634 3 plain 2017-12-19T19:39:43-08:00 Ray Li d76adcdbc48db5fec180c24315aed43f8b9d5f75This page is referenced by:
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2017-12-19T19:41:29-08:00
Invention of the Elevator
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By Ray Li
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2017-12-19T19:41:29-08:00
Most buildings in the late 1800’s were four to five stories in height.[1] This “limit” existed not because of construction problems, but due to practical reasons. Most tenants refused to climb more than five stories by stairs or could not find clients willing to do so. As a result, the upper floors were always “hardest to rent and brought the lowest returns.”2 However, this ended with the introduction of the passenger elevator.
The origins of the elevator can be traced all the way back to Archimedes. Descriptions of hoisting devices appear in his writings as well as in that of the Roman engineer, Vitruvius. Mentions of makeshift passenger elevators also crop up between the late seventeenth century and early nineteenth century. By the mid 1800’s, multiple British textile manufactures had installed freight elevators in their facilities.[2] However, the invention of the passenger elevator was credited to Elisha Otis in 1854.[3]
When Otis revealed his elevator at the New York Crystal Palace during the 1853 World’s Fair, the mechanism and propelling force for elevators were already well known. His elevator borrowed from existing models, consisting of “a platform set between vertical guide rails and raised and lowered on a rope wound around an overhead drum [which was] turned by belting that looped across the factory floor to the central, continuously turning steam engine.”3 The main difference in his device was the addition of a safety mechanism that locked the platform on its rails if it descended too quickly.3
Reaction to Otis’s demonstration was lackluster. A short segment in Scientific American described his elevator as a “plain platform” that “operate[d] like some of the elevators used in cotton factories.”[4] Another article in the New York Daily Tribune described the demonstration as one where Otis would “ride up and down the platform [and] occasionally cut the rope by which it [was] supported.”3 Otis would not become well known until after his death.[1] Weisman, Winston. "New York and the Problem of the First Skyscraper." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 12, no. 1 (1953): 13-21. doi:10.2307/987622.[2] Bernard, Andreas. Lifted: a cultural history of the elevator. New York: New York University Press, 2014.[3] Arnaud, Leopold. "The Tall Building in New York in the Twentieth Century." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 11, no. 2 (1952): 15-18. doi: 10.2307/987659.
