47 Fun Facts About Elevators

Which Roman venue hoisted caged animals to its arena floor on lifts?

The Colosseum's lifts rose from the hypogeum, a network of tunnels added under Emperor Domitian, where animals were kept before being hoisted into the arena.

Which French king had a 'flying chair' built for one of his mistresses at Versailles in 1743?

Louis XV had it made for Madame de Châteauroux, whose apartments were upstairs; she rode it up and down by tugging a cord inside the chair.

Which Disney ride, set in a Twilight Zone hotel, sends guests plunging down an elevator shaft?

Tower of Terror's backstory says a storm struck the Hollywood Tower Hotel one night in 1939, and the guests riding its elevator were never seen again.

Otis's 1850s safety brake is credited with making what practical?

Skyscrapers needed riders who trusted lifts: if the rope broke, Otis's catch locked the platform onto toothed ratchet bars fixed along the shaft.

Where did Otis stage his dramatic, death-defying demonstration of the safety elevator in 1854?

At the 1854 Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York's Crystal Palace, Otis rode a platform high above the crowd and had the rope cut; the safety brake held and orders began to climb.

In which Stanley Kubrick film do waves of blood pour out of a hotel's elevator doors?

The Shining's Overlook Hotel, bloody elevator included, was later recreated by Steven Spielberg for a sequence in his 2018 film Ready Player One.

Which 1994 Keanu Reeves film opens with SWAT officers saving passengers trapped in a bomb-rigged elevator?

Speed's elevator rescue wasn't in writer Graham Yost's first outline; he added it to show that his hero, Jack Traven, could figure out a bomber's trick.

Which jazz trumpeter improvised the soundtrack for Louis Malle's 1958 thriller Elevator to the Gallows?

Miles Davis and his band recorded the score in a single night in December 1957, improvising while looped scenes from the film played on a screen.

Which landmark, centerpiece of the 1962 World's Fair, opened with three custom elevators to its observation deck?

The Space Needle began as a doodle by fair chairman Edward Carlson, who had dined in the restaurant atop Stuttgart's TV tower and wanted one for Seattle.

Which word, once an Otis trademark, was ruled a generic term in 1950?

Escalator began as an Otis trade name around 1900, but the ruling found the public used it for any moving stairway, so rival makers were free to use it.

Who built the first electric elevator, in Mannheim in 1880?

Werner von Siemens had built a dynamo in 1866, a forerunner of the big generators that made electric lighting and motor drives such as his lift practical.

The Gateway Arch, with a tram hidden inside each of its hollow legs, stands in which US city?

St. Louis's arch trams, proposed by elevator businessman Dick Bowser, are part elevator and part Ferris wheel: their barrels rotate as they climb the curving legs.

Alexander Miles of Duluth, Minnesota, patented what elevator feature in 1887?

Automatic doors closing off the shaft solved a deadly problem: shaft doors were worked by hand and sometimes left open, and people fell down the shaft.

The Santa Justa Lift, an ornate iron street elevator climbing to a hilltop square, is in which city?

Lisbon's Santa Justa Lift opened in 1902 but only switched to electric power in 1907, carrying riders from the Baixa up to Largo do Carmo.

What 1945 event in New York helped push building owners toward automatic, self-service lifts?

An elevator operator strike brought the city to a halt, so owners won riders over to automatic cars with a big red stop button and a soothing recorded voice.

Betty Lou Oliver survived an elevator plunge after a bomber hit which building in 1945?

The Empire State Building crash cut the car's cables, but the slack cable coiled beneath it like a spring and, along with air trapped in the shaft, is thought to have softened the landing.

The paternoster lift, a loop of open cars that never stops, is named for its likeness to what?

Rosary beads are thought to be the origin: paternoster once named the larger beads, and the cars pass round in an endless loop, like beads through a praying hand.

Which author's 1972 sequel sent a great glass elevator into orbit to visit a Space Hotel?

Roald Dahl's elevator carries Charlie and Willy Wonka to a new US Space Hotel, and back on Earth the White House panics, taking them for invaders.

Which country dropped a 2015 rule letting only trained staff ride its paternoster lifts?

Germany's labour minister backed down after an outcry, and not for the first time: an earlier plan to shut down all the country's paternosters had also been dropped after protests.

The Bailong Elevator, a glass lift climbing a sandstone cliff past towering stone pillars, is in which country?

China's Bailong Elevator drew criticism from the start: critics said digging shafts into a World Heritage site went against the very reason it was listed.

Which landmark in the US capital opened in 1888 with a steam elevator taking up to 12 minutes to the top?

The Washington Monument's elevator had first hoisted building materials for the builders; once it was altered to carry passengers, visitor numbers grew rapidly.

In which 1988 film does a New York cop drop explosives down a tower's elevator shaft onto gunmen?

Die Hard's star, Bruce Willis, was still making the TV show Moonlighting, so he often came straight from a day's shooting to film in an unfinished LA tower at night.

Lifts that use destination dispatch often lack what inside the car?

Floor buttons are often absent because riders key in their floor in the lobby, so they can't change their minds once aboard.

In many lifts, which button often does nothing unless firefighters take control with a special key?

Door close buttons are often there mainly for show: the doors shut on their own after a pause, and that convinces riders the button worked.

Which 1982 sci-fi film shot scenes in LA's Bradbury Building, known for its open 'birdcage' elevators?

Blade Runner's Bradbury Building is often credited to George Wyman, a draftsman with no formal training who, relatives said, took the job after consulting the spirits.

The Burj Khalifa, whose lifts carry visitors to observation decks over 120 floors up, stands in which city?

Dubai's tower was called Burj Dubai until its 2010 opening, when it was renamed for Abu Dhabi's ruler, Sheikh Khalifa, just after Abu Dhabi helped Dubai pay its debts.

What stops trapped riders escaping through an elevator's ceiling hatch, as film heroes do?

Locked from outside is the rule in most lifts, since the hatch is there to let rescuers in, not riders out: a stalled car is far safer than the shaft around it.

What does a traction elevator's counterweight mainly save?

Motor power is saved because the counterweight balances the car plus roughly half its load, so the motor only lifts the difference.

Which kind of elevator is raised by a ram like a bulldozer's, not hauled by cables?

Hydraulic lifts are simpler and cheaper to install, but they move slowly and use more power lifting the car, which is partly why they stay in low buildings.

What does the cable-free MULTI elevator, developed by ThyssenKrupp, use to move its cabins?

Magnets replace the cables, and with nothing hanging them from above, the cabins can travel sideways as well as up and down.

What is a 'Sabbath elevator' programmed to do?

Stop at every floor automatically, and riders never need to press anything, which many observant Jews avoid on Shabbat; even so, some leading rabbis advise against riding them.

At the Statue of Liberty, visitors can ride an elevator to the pedestal but must climb stairs to reach what?

The crown takes a climb of about ten floors of stairs, and only limited numbers of visitors are allowed up, so crown tickets have to be reserved ahead.

What lifts the cab of a home 'vacuum elevator' that rides in a clear tube?

Lower air pressure above it does the lifting: a turbine sucks air out of the top of the tube, and letting the pressure return to normal lowers the cab.

What are the transfer floors called where express elevators drop passengers to switch to local elevators?

Sky lobbies spare a tall tower from giving up so much floor space to lift shafts, which is why the original World Trade Center used them, as One World Trade Center does today.

In which sitcom is the apartment building's elevator broken for almost the whole run, sending the characters up the stairs?

The Big Bang Theory's elevator was wrecked when Leonard's rocket fuel experiment exploded inside it, a flashback revealed; it finally worked again near the end of the series.

Why did physicist George Gamow, working low in his building, find the first elevator to arrive usually going down?

Most floors lay above, so a car usually reached him on its way back down, while his colleague Marvin Stern, near the top, found cars mostly arriving on the way up.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's 1895 dream of a tower reaching into space was inspired by which newly built landmark?

The Eiffel Tower set him imagining a tower built up to orbit, the seed of the space elevator; today's designs flip it, hanging a cable down from space instead.

Which author's 1979 novel The Fountains of Paradise, about building a space elevator, is set on an island based on Sri Lanka?

Arthur C. Clarke moved his fictional island south to straddle the equator, because a space elevator has to rise from the equator to line up with geostationary orbit.

Most space elevator designs would hang the lift on a cable made of what super-strong material?

Carbon nanotubes should be strong enough in theory, but nobody can yet make them long and flawless enough, which keeps the idea on the drawing board.

Elevator music is also widely known by the name of which company that piped it into buildings?

Muzak's name is said to have been coined by its founder, George Squier, blending 'music' with 'Kodak', one of the best-known brand names of the day.

Radio City Music Hall's 1932 stage elevators were a forerunner of lift systems aboard which World War II vessels?

Aircraft carriers were what the Navy had in mind when it studied the stage's workings, and Peter Clark's design also shaped other theatres, including the Metropolitan Opera House.

Colson Whitehead's novel The Intuitionist pits those who judge by instinct against those who measure, in rival schools of what?

Elevator inspectors of the Intuitionist school sense a lift's faults by meditating inside it, and the heroine faces an inquiry when one of her elevators goes into freefall.

What is a freight lift that rises through a hatch in the pavement outside a building called?

A sidewalk elevator is a freight lift that rises through doors set in the pavement, letting goods travel straight between the street and a basement.

What happens to a traction elevator's brake if power fails?

A spring engages it and holds the car, because electricity is what holds the brake open, so any power cut lets the spring clamp it shut.

What does a 'code-blue' key switch do in a hospital elevator?

Sends the fastest-responding car to that floor, even turning it around mid-trip, and once staff turn a matching key inside the car, they take control of it.

At the Three Gorges Dam, what does a giant elevator carry up and down past the dam wall?

Ships sail into a water-filled tank that is raised or lowered with them afloat, cutting a crossing of over three hours through the dam's locks to about an hour or less.

Which Las Vegas hotel carries guests to their rooms in slanted elevators called 'inclinators'?

Luxor's inclinators climb at a 39-degree angle, and the sideways pull left some early riders feeling disoriented, even woozy.