The safety elevator is an astonishingly successful mass transit system which has changed the very shape of our cities.
In 1853 Elisha Otis climbed onto a platform which was then hoisted high above a large crowd of onlookers, nervy with anticipation. A man with an axe cut the cable, the crowd gasped, and Otisβs platform shuddered β but it did not plunge. βAll safe, gentlemen, all safe!β he boomed. The city landscape was about to be turned on its head by the man who had invented not the elevator, but the elevator brake. As Tim Harford explains, the safety elevator is an astonishingly successful mass transit system which has changed the very shape of our cities.
Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Image: Modern Elevator, Credit: iurii/Shutterstock)
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Sources and related links
David Owen -Β βGreen Manhattanβ The New Yorker 18 October 2004
Richard Florida -Β βThe World Is Spikyβ The Atlantic Monthly October 2005
Nick Paumgarten -Β βUp and Then Downβ The New Yorker 21 AprilΒ Β
Kheir Al-Kodmany -Β βTall Buildings and Elevators: A Review of Recent Technological Advancesβ Buildings 2015, 5, 1070-1104
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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy
The stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which helped create the economic world
