50 Fun Facts About Elevators

According to the Roman architect Vitruvius, who built the first known elevator, probably in 236 BC?

Vitruvius is the earliest known reference to any elevator at all.

The Colosseum had roughly how many elevators for hoisting animals up to the arena floor?

They were operated by hand and counterweights, long before any motor.

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

A century later a Neapolitan architect installed another 'flying chair' at the Royal Palace of Caserta.

What did architects Burton and Homer call their 1823 London attraction that hoisted customers up for a view?

Twelve years later Frost and Stutt developed a belt-driven, counterweighted elevator called the Teagle.

In which year did Elisha Otis introduce the safety elevator?

He demonstrated it two years later by having the rope cut while he stood on the platform.

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

Demand for the safety elevator began to climb after the show.

The first passenger safety elevator was installed on 23 March 1857 in which New York building?

Otis also designed a special elevator for Peter Cooper's Cooper Union building, whose construction began in 1853.

In which US state was Elisha Otis born in 1811?

He was working in Yonkers, New York, when he devised the safety hoist.

Elisha Otis was installing machinery in what kind of works when he invented his safety elevator?

He had earlier invented a turner that made bed posts four times faster than by hand.

Elisha Otis died in 1861, aged 49, of which disease?

His sons Charles and Norton carried on the business, later Otis Brothers & Co.

Which word for a moving staircase was coined by an Otis Elevator Company worker?

Some rivals call their moving walkways 'autowalks'.

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

Anton Freissler developed the idea further into a successful elevator business in Austria-Hungary.

Which American inventor's electric elevator company, with 584 units sold, did Otis buy in 1895?

He also developed the idea of running multiple elevators in a single shaft.

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

Before that, riders had to shut shaft doors themselves, and open shafts caused many falls.

Where was India's first elevator installed by Otis in 1892?

Otis remains the world's largest maker of vertical transportation systems, based in Farmington, Connecticut.

What event in New York in 1945 helped speed the adoption of automatic elevators without operators?

Emergency stop buttons, telephones and a soothing automated voice were added to reassure nervous riders.

Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a fall of how many storeys when a B-25 hit the Empire State Building?

She had already been thrown from her car on the 80th floor; the second car's cables had been severed by the plane's engine.

The paternoster lift is named after the Lord's Prayer because its chain of cars resembles what?

Germany still had 231 of them as of 2015, and the Czech Republic 68.

In which building did Peter Ellis install the first paternoster-like lifts in 1868?

The tallest paternoster ever was in Stuttgart's 16-floor Tagblatt tower of 1927.

In which year did West Germany ban new paternoster installations?

An attempt to shut down all existing ones followed in 1994; Germany saw about one paternoster death a year before 2002.

What was the name of the world's first machine-room-less elevator, introduced by Kone in 1996?

It used 70–80% less energy than a hydraulic unit and put all components inside the hoistway.

Which family has controlled the Finnish elevator maker Kone since 1924?

Harald Herlin bought the company that year; his great-grandson Antti has chaired it since 2003. The name Kone means 'machine'.

Schindler, one of the world's biggest lift makers, was founded in 1874 in which Swiss city?

Robert Schindler and Eduard Villiger began with a workshop on an island in the river Reuss.

Schindler's 1992 Miconic 10 pioneered which elevator system, where riders enter their floor before boarding?

Grouping passengers by destination can raise elevator load by up to 25% in buildings like the Burj Khalifa.

Which conglomerate owned Otis from 1976 until spinning it off as an independent company in April 2020?

In 1977 Otis launched Elevonic, the first solid-state microprocessor elevator control system.

Which building held the record for the world's fastest elevators, at 20.5 metres per second, until 2017?

The Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre then edged it with 21 metres per second, about 76 km/h.

Which building holds the record for the fastest descending elevator, dropping at 45 km/h?

Descent speeds are kept lower than ascent speeds to spare passengers' ears.

In a traction elevator, what is the industry name for the deeply grooved pulley the steel ropes run over?

The friction between ropes and pulley supplies the 'traction' that names the whole system.

A traction elevator's counterweight equals the empty cab plus what fraction of rated capacity?

That balance means the motor only has to move the difference, saving power.

Above roughly how many floors do hydraulic elevators become impractical, forcing traction machines?

Hydraulic units are cheaper and simpler but slower, and long underground cylinders raise environmental worries about leaks.

Which German firm developed cable-free electromagnetic elevators that move horizontally as well as vertically?

The design is meant for very tall, high-density buildings where multiple cars can share one shaft.

What is a 'Sabbath elevator' programmed to do?

It lets observant Jews ride without pressing buttons, at the cost of a lot of wasted energy.

The 'door close' button in an elevator is often wrongly reported to be what?

Codes in the US actually require working door buttons for emergency and independent-service modes.

Which early-1950s Otis system was the first to predict traffic patterns and dispatch cars accordingly?

Its solid-state successor Elevonic arrived in 1977.

Where was the first vacuum elevator offered commercially, in 2000?

Pneumatic tube lifts suit homes because they need no machine room or pit.

The Eiffel Tower's leg elevators, built by Otis, are of what type?

They run from the ground to the first and second levels; Taipei 101 also uses two-level cars to its transfer floors.

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

Taipei 101's express cars stop only at levels 36 and 60.

Which Russian visitor's courtiers panicked at Berlin's Hotel Adlon over who should enter the elevator first?

Elevator etiquette was a live question for royalty in the early 20th century.

Which two physicists first noted the 'elevator paradox', that the first car to arrive seems to head the wrong way?

Gamow's office was near the bottom, so cars mostly arrived going down; Stern's was near the top, so they arrived going up.

Which physicist's 1895 book Dreams of Earth and Sky envisioned a giant tower to the stars?

His tower stood in compression; the modern concept is a cable hanging in tension from beyond geostationary orbit.

Which 1979 novel by Arthur C. Clarke features a space elevator?

Clarke consulted engineer Jerome Pearson, whose 1975 studies revived the concept.

Yuri Artsutanov's 1960 space-elevator concept, tethered from a satellite to the equator, was called what?

The 'Sky-Hook' name was used by Isaacs and colleagues for a similar geostationary-cable idea.

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

Radios and later piped music were installed to fill the awkward silence once operators disappeared.

Conventional hydraulic elevators, common in two- to five-floor buildings, top out at what speed?

Gearless traction machines, by contrast, can reach 20 metres per second.

Roughly how many buildings in New York City were still estimated to employ elevator operators in 2017?

Most were apartment buildings on Manhattan's Upper East and West Sides, plus a few subway stations.

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

Freight elevators in North America commonly have vertically opening doors the full width of the cab.

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

The drum brake is held open electrically and clamped by spring force, an example of inherent safety.

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

Medical staff then use a matching switch inside the car, choose a floor and hold the door-close button.

Otis's biggest contract as of 2013 supplied 670 elevators and escalators to which city's metro?

The company had opened its first Indian installation, at Government House in Calcutta, in 1892.

The inclined elevators of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas climb the side of its pyramid at what angle?

Other inclined elevators run at sites such as Dallas's Cityplace Station.