The Daily Lesson

There is an ancient monestary in Meteora, Greece.  The only way to get there is by being pulled up by rope in a basket – 1,300 feet up.  When asked how often they changed the ropes, the monks would reply, “When they break.”  When I heard this story it was being used as an example of faith.  Just as, I suppose, Russian roulette could be used as an example of faith.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have no problem with faith.  I couldn’t get through a day without it.  It takes a lot of faith, for instance, to cross any busy street.  But one of those things I don’t want to rely on faith for is riding in an elevator... at least not completely.

And that brings us to Otis Tufts, who patented the Vertical Railway Elevator on August 9, 1859.  Only Otis wasn’t really patenting the elevator.  Those things had been around for a long time.  And not just baskets on ropes.  Back in 236 BCE, Really Smart Guy Archimedes made one of the first elevators using ropes and pulleys.  That’s really all it takes. 

Then in 80 CE, give or take, the Romans used hydraulic lifts to raise and lower platforms in the Collosium.  And, yeah, hydraulics – or pistons – work to raise and lower platforms.  Just pump enough water into a tube and whatever’s on the other end is going to move.  The problem with hydraulic lifts is they’re not very practical for tall buildings, because they require a pit beneath the shaft equal to the height of the building.  So in a ten story building you’ll need a ten story pit.

And that pretty much leaves ropes.  Even so, they were a rare and impractical novelty, mostly for rich people.  The problem with elevators has always been safety.  If that rope breaks – and ropes do break, just ask the monks – then that box is going to fall.  Be it freight or people, they won’t like it.

And that brings us back to Otis Tufts.  Instead of using ropes, his elevator used a big screw that ran the entire height of the building.  When the screw turned, the elevator went up or down.  It featured, for the first time, an enclosed cabin where passengers could comfortably sit, and it even had automatic doors.  That made it much different than other elevators in use at the time, which were pretty much open platform freight elevators.

Tufts elevator was installed in the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, and was such a novelty that 100s of people came every day to ride it.  Even though it was much safer, the disadvantages were that it was slow... really slow... and it was very expensive to install.

Enter the other Otis, Elisha Otis, who invented the automatic safety break mechanism in 1852.  It was fairly simple, and fairly cheap, but highly effective.  It consisted of an old wagon leaf spring that would catch on a ratchet if the rope broke.  Problem solved.

So Elisha Otis had solved the safety problem, and Otis Tufts had solved the comfort issue.  Elisha won the “battle” becasue his elevator was just as safe, it was faster, but mostly because it was cheaper.  Making it more comfortable was the easy part.  And that’s why the Otis Elevator Comnpany – Elisha Otis, not Otis Tufts – is the largest elevator and escalator company in the world.

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