Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Elevator (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, this is Gary, and I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be taking a brief summer break this week. So I've lined up some episodes from the archives that statistically I know most of you haven't listened to. And if you have heard it, it'll be a good refresher. I'll be back again with new episodes on July 23rd. Some of the things we use every day were invented in the distant past. Other things were invented quite recently. However, there's a category of inventions that have been known forever, but no one ever really had any practical use for it until recently.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Learn more about the elevator. Now it helped create the modern world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:01:04 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. If you think about it, the elevator is a pretty simple device. Ever since we had ropes and pulleys, we had everything we need to make elevators. It isn't surprising that the first recorded example of something like an elevator was created by Archimedes, who built a crude lifting device out of hemp rope. We know that throughout the ancient world in the medieval periods, there were many rope and pulley lifting devices. It wasn't something that was uncommon.

Starting point is 00:01:42 However, they were almost always used as cranes for construction. They were mostly used to lift large stones and not people. There are several reasons why elevators never took off for lifting people. First, there was little need to lift people very high. Most buildings prior to the 19th century weren't that tall. While there were some tall buildings like cathedrals, it was mostly a large enclosed space, and few people needed to go anywhere other than the ground floor. In ancient Rome, they had apartment buildings called insulas.

Starting point is 00:02:11 The very tallest might get five or six stories, and the rents were based on on how high up they were. Unlike modern buildings where the penthouse might be the most expensive unit, back then, the higher up you were, the cheaper the rent, because you had to walk up and down all the time. Even mines weren't designed for elevators, because they weren't dug with a vertical shaft. They just dug tunnels by hand, and then you walked into the tunnel. The second problem was that of energy. If someone is going to be lifted up or down, something is going to have to provide the energy to do it. On a construction site, you might have a team of animals or people to provide that power, but it wasn't something that was on demand that you could use in a building.

Starting point is 00:02:50 The final problem was safety. If you lift someone up by a rope, what happens if the rope breaks? You fall and you die, or you get seriously injured. They didn't have cables back then. They only had fiber ropes that had a limited lifespan. Over the centuries, there were other attempts at lifting people up and down with ropes. In Morris, Spain, the Muslims had a built-an elevator-like device to raise weapons. The Inter-Ordo Da Vinci had created a system, at least on paper. In the 18th century, King Louis XV of France created a flying chair to bring his mistress up to his room at the Palace of Versailles. However, these were mostly one-off experimental projects, which weren't really intended for widespread use. The 19th century saw a confluence of technologies and needs which led to vertically

Starting point is 00:03:33 moving things. The development of steam engines in the 18th century led to a demand for coal, which required deeper mines which necessitated lifting things up and down. Steam engines were a way to provide power to provide mechanical lift. In 1835 in England, a huge innovation in elevators was created with the development of the permanent counterweight. The counterweight lessened the amount of energy needed to lift things up and down. However, the big advance and the thing which made elevators plausible as a means of transporting humans was developed in 1852 by Elijah Otis. He developed the safety elevator.

Starting point is 00:04:11 This was a system that would prevent an elevator car from falling if the rope was cut. He dubbed it, quote, An Improvement in Hoisting Apparadus Elevator Break. He famously gave a demonstration at the exhibition of industry of all nations in New York in 1854. He was raised up on a platform that was suspended by a single rope. At his signal, the rope was cut by a man holding an axe. As the crowd gasped, the elevator fell a few inches and then was stopped by a single. safety mechanism. He then said, quote, all safe, ladies and gentlemen, all safe. If the name

Starting point is 00:04:44 Otis rings a bell, that's because he started the Otis Elevator Company, which is the largest elevator company in the world today. Believe it or not, the first building with an elevator shaft preceded the first elevator. The Cooper Union Foundation building in New York was built with an elevator shaft because the building's owner, Peter Cooper, assumed that a safe elevator would be developed in the future. The elevator shaft was round, however, because that's what he assumed the shape would be. Elijah Otis actually created a specially designed elevator just for the building and its special shaft. The building and its elevator shaft are still there today. Otis's demonstration was a success as far as selling elevators went. Before a safety demonstration, he had only sold three

Starting point is 00:05:26 elevators. After the demonstration, he sold seven within the first year. Most of these were two or three-story elevators for residential homes. The first commercial elevator, which was open to the public, was in 1857. It was installed in the EV Hot Warp building in New York. It was a steam-powered hydraulic elevator that went five stories. It was installed for a department store that installed it as an attraction to draw customers. The elevator car was more of a room with couches where people could sit, and it was really, really slow. Many people were terrified to ride in it. The passenger elevator radically changed architecture. Prior to the elevator, there was a natural limit to how tall buildings could be. Even if you could build a 20-story building, for example, you couldn't reasonably

Starting point is 00:06:11 expect people to walk up and down 20 stories every day. The next big innovation in elevators was the electric motor. Steam worked, but steam engines were big, noisy, and not really efficient. Buildings grew taller as elevators became more popular and accepted. Doors that automatically opened and closed were invented in 1887, and in 1900, the first automated elevator was installed. People, however, didn't like to use automated elevators. For most of the first half of the 20th century, public and commercial buildings had elevator operators. An elevator operator strike in New York in 1945, plus the addition of safety features such as an emergency stop button and an emergency phone, made automated elevators more accepted to the public. I'm just old

Starting point is 00:06:57 enough to remember the very last elevator operator in my hometown when I was younger. Elevator technology hasn't stopped. As buildings grew taller, there has been a need to rethink how elevators worked. For an ultra-tall skyscraper, simply having a single elevator shaft that stopped at all 100 floors, for example, would be extremely inefficient. If you had to get to the 100th floor, it would take forever. Moreover, the more floors, the more elevators you need, and each elevator shaft takes up valuable floor space. One common technique in really tall buildings is to have express elevators, just like you would have an express lane on a highway.

Starting point is 00:07:33 Then you would transfer to a different elevator, just as you might transfer airplanes at a hub airport. These new techniques have allowed buildings like the Birch Khalifa in Dubai to reach 2,717 feet high. The current record for the fastest elevator in the world is located at the CTF Tower in Guangzhou, China. It can go from the ground floor, to the 95th floor in 45 seconds. That's 20 meters per second or 65 feet per second. The longest

Starting point is 00:08:01 elevator in a single shaft is located in South Africa. The Anglo-Gold Ashanti-Umpameg gold mine has a shaft which is 2,283 meters or 7,490 feet deep. That's four and a half times deeper than the Birch Khalifa is tall. The Umeda-Hanku building in Osaka, Japan has an elevator car that can hold 80 people and is a capacity of 11,574 pounds. There are all sorts of unusual elevators which have been custom installed in buildings. The Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas has a pyramid that has elevators inclined at a 39-degree angle. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis has a curved elevator that goes up the inside of the arch at the top over 600 feet. The lobby of the Louvre has an elevator that has no car. It's just a hydraulic lift where people stand at the top of a piston. Today, elevators

Starting point is 00:08:51 are one of the safest modes of transportation in the world. They're safer than stairs because falling down a flight of stairs causes far more injuries than elevators. In fact, you almost never hear about an elevator disaster. At worst, it just stops and someone might get stuck. So the next time you press a button in an elevator, say a quick thanks to Elijah Otis, the man who made a 2,000-year-old invention practical for the modern world. Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala. The associate producer is Thor Thompson. Remember to leave a five-star review to get your review read on the show. They can be left at Apple Podcasts, Podcasts, Podcast Republic, or wherever you listen to the show. Also, you can help

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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Elevator (Encore)

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