The ancient Greeks made first elevators, by using pulleys and winches. What made revolution in elevator technology? Read all about interesting elevators history and evolutions. Modern elevators become widely available just over years ago. Where was the elevator invented? Who invented the first modern elevator? What year was the elevator invented? Learn all about elevator invention and inventors. Did you know that elevators are safer than cars? Read about interesting facts, myths and corresponding truths about elevators.
To do so, it had to come up with an entirely new type of cable made of carbon fiber, because conventional steel ones would be too heavy and jam up.
Elevators are among the safest forms of transport and are safer than escalators and even stairs due to falls , but they can still cause fatal accidents, including gruesome ones. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that elevators injure 17, and kill 27 people a year in the US, with half of those deaths relating to workers performing installations or repairs. Malfunctioning elevators tend to suddenly shoot upwards rather than fall, which is more difficult due to the safety brakes.
One famous exception is a accident at the Empire State Building, when a B bomber crashed into the 79th floor and severed the cables of one lift making it plunge from the 38th floor to the basement. Operator Betty Lou Oliver survived the fall. A recent example of such an accident happened in late , when an elevator in the skyscraper formerly know as John Hancock Center in Chicago dropped 84 floors after a hoist rope broke.
All passengers survived the fall. Shanghai Tower picks up 3 Guinness World Records including fastest elevator. Some people find elevators uncomfortable due to claustrophobia, or fear of enclosed spaces.
Engineering firm KJA has calculated that the odds of being trapped, for someone who takes an elevator an average of 8 times a day, are 1 in 5, each month. Over 25 years that goes down to 1 in 17, meaning it's somewhat likely for a city dweller to get trapped at least once in a lifetime.
The record for the longest entrapment belongs to Manhattanite Nicholas White, who, in , spent an entire weekend -- 41 hours -- stuck inside an elevator in his office building, after he decided to go down for a smoke on a Friday evening. The car was shut down for maintenance mid-journey and his ordeal was caught on tape by security cameras.
Where do you stand? Why is it often awkward to ride in a packed elevator? Elevator etiquette is extremely variable throughout different times and different cultures, but a universal trait is that we don't like to stand too close to strangers, which is why most people tend to maximize their personal space once inside an elevator car. If someone else enters, you move to a corner or to a side," said Grey.
Cognitive science researcher Rebekah Rousi conducted a study in which she observed elevator use in an office building in Australia, and noted that men and women behaved differently: "Older, perhaps more senior professional men traveled towards the back of the cabin, while women were towards the front.
Women were less hesitant to look in mirrors while other people of any gender were traveling in the elevator, and more likely to look at the floor," she said in an email. Individual patterns can be suppressed by cultural norms. For example, Rousi says, in Japan, a highly hierarchical society, junior staff will let more senior staff into the elevator first, and then press the button for them.
A "Candid Camera" episode titled "Face the Rear," based on the work of social psychologist Solomon Asch, illustrates how quickly social norms can be flipped in the confined space of an elevator, sometimes to comedic effect. In the episode, an elevator opens to show everyone inside -- all actors -- awkwardly facing the back wall. People who enter are puzzled at first, before eventually do the same, demonstrating the power of social pressure. In , Otis came up with a design that had a safety "brake.
Otis himself demonstrated the device, which he called a "safety hoist," at the New York World's Fair in , when he went up in a make-shift elevator himself and had the ropes cut.
Rather than plummeting to his death as the audience thought might happen, his safety hoist snapped out, catching the elevator within seconds. Needless to say, the crowd was impressed. Otis went on to found his own elevator company, which installed the first public elevator in a New York building in The Otis Elevator Company is still known today as the world's largest elevator manufacturer.
While the cable elevator design has remained, many additional improvements have been made, the most obvious of which is that elevators now run on electricity rather than steam power, a change that came about starting in the s. The electric elevator was patented by Alexander Miles in , though one had been built by the German inventor Werner von Siemens in Otis' safety hoist wasn't the end of safety innovation, either.
These days, it's virtually impossible for an elevator to plummet and kill passengers. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up.
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