Are you a claustrophobic? If small enclosed spaces make you feel afraid, as if you are stuck inside a box, you probably are? Feeling this way every time you step into an elevator (or a lift) is a good indicator that you suffer with claustrophobia. I prefer using the stairs, but if I were to visit a skyscraper, I wouldn’t have an option.
Did you know that skyscrapers across the world were an offshoot of elevators? Till the advent of reliable elevators, buildings could be constructed only up to a certain height as climbing beyond few floors is tiresome for most. Once elevators became a success, the sky literally was the limit.
In the 19th century, steam and hydraulic elevators which had a platform which could go up and down came into existence. These had a piston inside a cylinder which used pressure to raise or lower the car. Elevator designs that use cable systems, where ropes raise or lower the car using pulley and gear system, also came into being. But the fear that these structures could go into free fall, thereby causing terrible damage, was still in people’s minds.
The man who got rid of this fear and convinced people to hop on board was Elisha Graves Otis. And to do that, he had to perform a death-defying demonstration for everyone to see and decide.
Otis was in the business of elevators in the 1850s. But with people lacking trust in the product that he was selling, he could count the number of elevators he sold using his fingers. He had incorporated a safety break into his elevator but he knew that it wasn’t yet part of the public’s perception.
Otis decided to hold a demonstration at the New York Crystal Palace, an exhibition hall built for the 1853 Worlds Fair. Standing high above the crowd on a platform that was suspended by a rope, Otis cut the rope suddenly, taking the crowd completely by surprise. His safety break came into the picture, stopping the platform from crashing to the ground, but instead merely dropping a few inches.
This break, which Otis called a “safety hoist”, was a wooden frame at the top of the platform that would snap out against the sides of the elevator shaft when the ropes break. By performing this stunt, Otis had finally won over the people’s trust.
Elevators soon picked up and vertical transportation was never the same again. Otis died seven years later, but his company continues to be among the most popular in the industry. Be it the Burj Khalifa, the tallest man-made structure in the world, or other iconic structures like the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building and the Petronas Twin Towers, all of them use the lifts installed by the Otis Elevator Company.
ganesh.a.s@thehindu.co.in
