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.
[Illustration: 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.)]
[Illustration: Figure 6.--The promenade beneath the Eiffel Tower, 1889.
(From _La Nature_, Nov. 30, 1889, vol. 17, p. 425.)]
[Illustration: 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.