Elevator Development before the Tower
While power-driven hoists and elevators in many forms had been used since the early years of the 19th century, the ever-present possibility of breakage of the hoisting rope restricted their use almost entirely to the handling of goods in mills and warehouses.[3] Not until the invention of a device which would positively prevent this was there much basis for work on other elements of the system. The first workable mechanism to prevent the car from dropping to the bottom of the hoistway in event of rope failure was the product of Elisha G. Otis (1811-1861), a mechanic of Yonkers, New York. The invention was made more or less as a matter of course along with the other machinery for a new mattress factory of which Otis was master mechanic.
Figure 5.—Correcting erection discrepancies by raising pier member—with hydraulic press and hand pump—and inserting shims.
(From La Nature, Feb. 18, 1888, vol. 16, p. 184.)
Figure 6.—The promenade beneath the Eiffel Tower, 1889. (From La Nature, Nov. 30, 1889, vol. 17, p. 425.)
Figure 7.—Teagle elevator in an English mill about 1845. Power was taken from the line shafting.
(From Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Volume of Useful Arts, London, n.d. [ca. 1845].)
The importance of this invention soon became evident to Otis, and he introduced his device to the public three years later during the second season of the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition, in 1854. Here he would demonstrate dramatically the perfect safety of his elevator by cutting the hoisting rope of a suspended platform on which he himself stood, uttering the immortal words which have come to be inseparably associated with the history of the elevator—“All safe, gentlemen!”[4]
The invention achieved popularity slowly, but did find increasing favor in manufactories throughout the eastern United States. The significance of Otis’ early work in this field lay strictly in the safety features of his elevators rather than in the hoisting equipment. His earliest systems were operated by machinery similar to that of the teagle elevator in which the hoisting drum was driven from the mill shafting by simple fast and loose pulleys with crossed and straight belts to raise, lower, and stop. This scheme, already common at the time, was itself a direct improvement on the ancient hand-powered drum hoist.
The first complete elevator machine in the United States, constructed in 1855, was a complex and inefficient contrivance built around an oscillating-cylinder steam engine. The advantages of an elevator system independent of the mill drive quickly became apparent, and by 1860 improved steam elevator machines were being produced in some quantity, but almost exclusively for freight service. It is not clear when the first elevator was installed explicitly for passenger service, but it was probably in 1857, when Otis placed one in a store on Broadway at Broome Street in New York.
In the decade following the Civil War, tall buildings had just begun to emerge; and, although the skylines of the world’s great cities were still dominated by church spires, there was increasing activity in the development of elevator apparatus adapted to the transportation of people as well as of merchandise. Operators of hotels and stores gradually became aware of the commercial advantages to be gained by elevating their patrons even one or two floors above the ground, by machinery. The steam engine formed the foundation of the early elevator industry, but as building heights increased it was gradually replaced by hydraulic, and ultimately by electrical, systems.