"If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button"
Sam Levenson, American author and humorist
Who would now dare to travel in a high-rise elevator if their life literally hung by the elevator cable? In 1852 Maize and Burns, a bedstead-making firm in Yonkers, New York, was faced with that problem— how to hoist its bedsteads up to the top floor of its premises without risk of them crashing down if the rope broke. Elisha Otis (1811-1861), the firm's master mechanic, had experience of designing safety brakes for railway wagons. He devised a system involving a platform that could move freely within an elevator shaft unless there was a cable failure, whereupon a tough steel-wagon spring would mesh with a ratchet in such a way as to catch and hold the heavy platform.
Otis left the company to market his invention. Interest was slow at first, but in 1854 he arranged a public display at New York's Crystal Palace. He had an elevator shaft built, open on one side for viewing. He was then hoisted to the height of a house before his assistant took an axe and cut the cable holding the elevator in place. The ratchets engaged, and the elevator and Otis, to great relief, remained suspended.
In 1903 the electric elevator ushered in the era of the skyscraper. Otis elevators remain essential to tall buildings, with 1.7 million in operation worldwide.
