Early Elevators and Engineering: Meeting a Need

In our last article, we touched on the basic engineering that must have been in use when man decided to go vertical and move goods and people via mechanical means. I'm not sure if the term "engineering" was even a thought then, but I am sure the thought process, then trial and error, took place before a suitable method was worked out.

So even if we look back and wonder "how the heck did these folks ever get this done without professional and educated engineers"?, they did in fact get it done - and in some estimates since about the 3rd Century BC. (Ain't the Internet great for getting information?). Did they do this vertical thing safely? Probably not, or at least not the way we look at safety now. I'm sure Thug jumped out of the way when Thang fell out of the basket, but what of poor ol' Thang? Was there a safety net? What if (probably when, not if) the rope broke and the whole mess came down?

Elevators never really caught the public's attention as a viable and safe means of vertical transportation until 1854 at the World's Fair in New York City when inventor Elisha Otis demonstrated the "Safety-Brake" device that arrested a free-falling elevator without injury to the riders by performing this himself; after being hoisted up, he ordered the suspension means cut and the open elevator platform he was standing on fell, and then dramatically the fall was halted by the safety-brakes mounted on the platform frame and when stopped he was recorded as saying: "All's Safe!". And the boom was on for elevators to serve a nation that was building up as well as out.

The "All Safe" patch has been part of the Otis technicians uniform for many years. I still have one of mine. Otis's first sold elevator product was a steam driven freight elevator and then hydraulic elevators became common. I've only seen two early water hydraulic elevators and only worked very briefly on one of those. The electric elevator is credited to German inventor Werner von Siemens in 1880. Some of you may have heard of the Siemens name here and there. We will take a closer look at the safety-brake then and now in the next of this series of elevator engineering. It has not changed much over the past 126 plus years and is an excellent example of engineering meeting a need. - Joe