Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Escalators

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Alex Schmidt and special guest Dan Hopper explore why escalators are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Escalators! Known for being in malls. Famous for being in airports. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why escalators are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there folks, welcome to a whole new podcast episode of Podcasts All About Why Being Alive is More Interesting Than People Think It Is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone. Katie is out this week and I'm joined by a wonderful returning guest. You've seen his comedy writing places like College Humor and The New Yorker. Andy is the host and creator of the wonderful new sports podcast, Thrill of Defeat. Please welcome back Dan Hopper.

Hey, Dan. Hey, thanks for having me on, Alex. It's such a treat. It's been a while and I'm glad you're here. And thanks for, people should really check out Dan's podcast. He very kindly had me on an episode about the Chicago White Sox along with Jimmy Pardo. And it's a show about like getting to understand the fan experience for specific sports teams, which is a thing you wonder about, you know?

It's great. Yes. Yeah, it's a sports podcast for non-hardcore sports fans. If you just want to learn about the pain that every fan base goes through, and Alex and Jimmy were happy enough to talk about theirs. It was great. It was a treat. I also, I really love the Seattle Supersonics episode, and it has prepared me for the potential

eventuality that the White Sox move in a few years. It's helping me cope in advance possibly, so it's good. Well, I'm glad possibly. So it's good Well, I'm glad yeah, it's been a little more therapeutic I thought it'd be funny and like, you know, everyone's laugh But it's really been almost kind of therapeutic people like getting out there 30 years of frustration on on the air and I'm like, oh cool. I mean this works too. It's still good We all need everything, you know, yeah and and

Thanks for being on this one. Also, big thanks to a couple of listeners, Court Jester on the Discord, also Linnet T on the Discord. They are two of a few people who've really pushed for this topic in a wonderful and fun way. So thank you, folks. And it was a poll winner. We get to make an episode.

And Dan, what is your relationship to or opinion of the topic of escalators? When you said it to me, I was like, I have no opinion of escalators at first and then I thought about it and I mean Immediately think of malls. I think that's number one. I remember Yeah, Monroeville mall growing up and when you're a kid It's like kind of fun being on the escalator and then like you jump off at the end And I remember like at the very end of the stairs disappear and there's this glowing green light and I thought it was some kind of cool imagining it being like the stairs disappearing into

acid or something like that. I don't know, when you're a kid you turn every boring little thing into a game. That was my first like, oh yeah, the escalator. I'm sure Monroeville is the Pittsburgh area, but I have the same experience at Yorktown Mall near Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Yeah. That's when you start riding escalators and that's it. Yeah.

There's an itchy and scratchy cartoon where itchy nails his feet to the escalator and it rips his skin off because you always imagine that happening. Like if you don't get off the escalator that like little end part you're gonna Get like sucked in or something and that's uh, there's a gross visual representation of that Yeah, yeah the real deep pool. I thought of too. There's an old NES game called elevator action Have you ever heard of that? No, no, it's it's not good, but I still played it a thousand times just because you play anything that's not good

when you're a kid. And it's a game, you're like some secret agent, you start at the top of a building and you have to use elevators and escalators to get to the bottom of the building while guys in like black fedoras shoot at you. Wow. I don't know if it's a game about the thrilling power.

I mean, elevators in the title, but you use escalators too. It's the thrill of automated stairwells captured in game form. Yeah, oddly, one thing we'll get into more later is that elevators were invented first. And that means that some of the first things we call escalators now had names like the inclined elevator and the overall industry of this kind of thing. It has a trade journal called Elevator Worlds. Oh my God. That also covers escalators.

They're also the leading magazine of escalators. Escalators are sort of tucked into the elevator topic. I might misspeak once or twice and say elevator instead of escalator sometimes because they're similar. It's sort of one unified thing. It does. One thing about this podcast that always interests me is you probe those corners of the world.

There's this whole ecosystem of like, what was that, Elevator Month? What? Elevator Worlds. Elevator World. It's a trade journal. Trade journal. It's so fascinating to me that this thing

that immediately sounds boring, escalators what, and you don't think anything about, has a publication devoted to it. I'm sure there's trade shows in Vegas and San Diego and everyone goes and gets drunk and hooks up. Then there's like, oh, there's Mark Bladstlin. He invented invented this. It's just the last innovation of elevators. I don't know.

Like to them, there's some celebrities and stuff. Apparently, the field is called the building transportation industry, which sounds like moving a whole building, but it's transportation within a building, the building transportation industry. And yeah, it's like you say, like Mark Gladzblin or whatever is a king of it. Yeah. Yeah. At the bar of the Marriott, everyone's trying to talk to him, you know?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm actually excited to get into this topic. It's a perfect SIF choice. Thank you again, Court Jester and Lynette T and others. And on every episode, we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called, Can You Take Stare Tire?

It was submitted by Kevin Palmer. Thank you, Kevin. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a Missillian Wacking Bass possible. Submit through Discord or to siffpod.gmail.com. I was a little disappointed how short that was. I thought you were going to do the whole chorus. The numbers we're blind men see. I remember a friend of mine and I call that, there were some blog posts years ago that

refer to that style of singing as yarling, like that 90s like, and it's such a useful term for, yeah, for like Pearl Jam Creed, Collective Soul, Dishwala. Every band just decided, because that's not a natural voice. Every band in the 90s was just like, Because that's not a natural voice. Every band in the 90s was just like, I'm gonna sing like this. Turn your head now baby, spit me. You know, like, Garling. Right. If you caught those guys singing their real way, it's just, I'm Scott Stepp and I'm singing

a song. Like it would not be that at all. Yeah. It's not, you know, there's no reason 20 bands all sounded exactly like that. It was just some affectation that everyone just copied. It's such a specific era. And yeah, I'm glad we're past it. And the first number this week is about three and a half minutes.

About three and a half minutes is the length of the escalator ride on one DC Metro escalator in Maryland. Wow. The DC Metro is the public transit trains for Washington DC's area. Didn't make the obvious three and a half minute joke that people are thinking, hey, call me Mr. Three and a half minutes. It's like not too short. It's not like so short that it's like embarrassing for, you know, as a sex joke, but it's also not good. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I guess he's like slightly bad at sex, but not that bad. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe he does other stuff that makes it okay. I don't know. I don't know him. I don't know. Yeah, maybe he does other stuff that makes it okay. I don't know. I don't know him. I don't know his deal.

Anyway, non-joke related, that is a crazy amount of time to be on an escalator. It's an escalator for a stop on the red line of the metro system. It serves a suburb called Wheaton in Maryland. According to Atlas Obscura, that's the longest single continuous escalator in the Western Hemisphere Hmm by distance it is 230 feet long Wow, and that's not the depth into the ground It's like the diagonal length of the escalator. Uh-huh. So 230 feet that's slightly more than 70 meters It is a little longer than the wingspan of a Boeing 747-8 passenger plane. Cool.

It takes, to me, too long, but it's out there. Yeah, that's really... Is there, I mean, what are the conditions you have to have for it to still be an escalator being the solution to that transportation problem, but it's that long? Yeah, great question, because it turns out this is not the deepest station on the DC Metro. The one furthest underground is at Forest Glen, and they have high-speed elevators.

Because whoever runs the DC Metro has a cutoff point for, it's simply too long of an escalator, we'll put in high-speed elevators. And even though that carries less people The escalator is just not practical Yeah, I mean it's it's interesting that that cutoff is not longer than I mean, I guess three and a half minutes It is not horrible. It's just for an escalator. That's that's crazy It is and we'll talk later about walking on them

I'm sure a lot of people who are regular riders there walk that escalator because like of course Why would you just sit and listen to an entire, I guess, Hire by Creed or something? It's a pop song length. Yeah. Are there breaks? It's continuous? It's not like, is there like- Just one big escalator. Okay. Yeah. Because I was trying to think of the longest escalators. I know the seven train in New York You know some stops you go way down the escalator But it's usually escalator walk a little escalator walk a little like there's not like I don't think there's one huge one I'm but I could be remembering wrong No, I think you're right. Yeah, because there are a few longer escalators not anywhere in the US or UK or other countries have been to. Apparently,

the single longest escalators in the world are 453 feet long, which is substantially longer than the 230 in DC. 453 feet long is more than 138 meters. Three different stations on the St. Petersburg, Russia transit subway have an escalator that long instead of an elevator. I thought you were going to say it was some one of those new like Dubai things that just breaks a record for no reason. They're just like, you know, it is 10 times longer than the biggest elevator in the escalator in the world. You're like, OK, cool. Where's it go? I don't know, some club that's empty now. The top of it is just a dune. Like, oh, okay, great. That's fun. And the other amazing number is 2,624 feet. 2,624 feet is about half a mile or 800 meters.

Yeah, that's many more feet. That's the combined length of a chain of escalators in Hong Kong. Wow. Where does that go? Connects to entire sections of the city. Apparently Hong Kong, some of the neighborhoods are sort of at separate elevations from each other. And so in 1993, Hong Kong unveiled a giant network of more than a dozen outdoor covered

escalators to connect the central business district with an affluent neighborhood called the mid-levels. And they're sort of at different elevations from each other, so that's why it's escalators. And it's like a tourist attraction for Hong Kong to go ride the biggest escalator system in the world. Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like that'd be a cool novelty. Are there gift shops with escalator themed merch and stuff? All I got was this fantastic t-shirt.

We're very proud of them. I went down at the Hong Kong. The other tourism escalator is a former dragon escalator in Longqing Gorge in the People's Republic of China. Atlas Obscura says that there's a giant gorge north of Beijing where they built a giant hydroelectric dam and then tried to wow tourists with an 850 foot long escalator entirely decorated like one of those long Chinese dragons.

Cool. Like you go into the dragon's mouth and then out the dragon's tail kind of thing. Oh, that's awesome. When you first mentioned it, you kind of glossed over you like something something dragon escalator and It like it like we were supposed to know what that was. It's like Explained it. Yeah Dragon, not not a bunch of like a board commuting dragons like on their way big physical newspaper and like briefcase and umbrella,

just checking their watches. And like trying to take a call even though you're going underground. I don't know man. I don't know what dragons sound like. Some of them are very intelligent. I don't know. And yeah, that's a humongous escalator. But as of 2021, it has turned off and closed to the public. Apparently there was not enough interest from tourists to keep it running. So it's off the list.

But we'll link Atlas Obscura. They have pictures of it looking like a huge, long, traditional Chinese dragon sneaking up a mountain. It's kind of fun. I'm taking a bath on this dragon escalator project. It's like when one of Cresty's investments goes poorly, like that noise. Yeah. Yeah.

Just a bunch of people who wanted to say, I told you so, but couldn't because it was like they didn't want to disrespect their boss. I don't know he was he's really excited about this dragon escalator. Let's just let him do it. He said dragon escalator like we just are supposed to know what that is. I know he's really excited. The other number here for like massive lengths is basically a lack of a number. I wanted to know the escalator with the most steps, like the quantity of steps. You really can't find that and let us know on Discord if you do find it, but you can

also ballpark guess the length of an escalator in terms of steps because of how they're built. The way the steps work is how I would have assumed, so I don't know if it's very stiff, but it's basically a big looping conveyor belt of steps. So at the end of the ride, the steps do a hairpin turn and go underneath you back up the other way. If you like say double the amount of steps under you plus a few more steps for each end of the hairpin turn, that's the amount of steps on an escalator. That makes sense. I mean, was the longest escalator the... I've said elevator instead of escalator so many times on this podcast. I don't know why.

I typed it as I was making my doc. I was like, what's wrong with me? Yeah, yeah, escalator. But do we just not say the word escalator that much in our lives? And that's why it's like, it's not like I say elevator that much more, but I just, my brain is like, I guess I take elevators probably 10 times as often. I don't know. They're more common in general. Yeah. But so, yeah, so it's, it's how I would have guessed as a kid. There's, it's just a big loop and then there's steps going the other direction upside down

underneath you So that's how my step there is the most steps just the longest one you're getting you're thinking That's what I think. Yeah, cuz also Oddly speaking of custom escalators. The next number is seven stories Seven stories of a building is the height of a spiral escalator in Shanghai. A few places around the world have spiral-shaped escalators. It's that conveyor belt of steps, but it's really customized to go in a spiral direction and be an uneven length and arrangement. The tallest one in the world is at Shanghai's New World Daimaru department store.

Apparently almost all of them are built by the Mitsubishi Corporation in Japan and it's almost a trade secret how they make it work. I don't think I've ever been on a spiral escalator before. I can't even really picture it now that you mention it. I found one picture of one at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and I racked my brain about did I've been there like once and did I go on it, but they're very rare and extremely expensive. Apparently the number is a single spiral escalator costs around 900,000 US dollars, almost a million dollars to install, which is at least four times more than a regular escalator. Mitsubishi basically builds these for places that are luxurious, like top end shopping malls, Vegas casinos.

They say that they're upfront with customers about it being way too expensive, also taking a little more room, but quote, you have a very panoramic view, which changes as you turn as you slowly make your way around the arc upwards. You have to think of escalators in a new way as an amenity to the building. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Do they if it breaks down, can only like Mitsubishi tame it? Is that because it seems like that would be such a monopoly. Pretty much. Yeah. So it's good.

They're a big company. Like they do a bunch of stuff. They do cars and tech and everything. But they've been the world leader in this since 1985. And when Atlas Obs obscura interviewed them Mitsubishi would not say how they make the handrails work, right? They were like, it's sort of a secret. We won't tell you So that's neat that's just a weird Easter egg of the elevator worlds building transportation

industry Don't get in with the Mitsubishi people. They're the only ones that know they'll have your butt in a spiral shaped vice If you're a child we said candy candy Mommy what is it did the bad man say on the podcast about escalators that I love? It's a kid who loves, like, four-year-old loves SIF pod. It is like one of those technologies, because like malls, and also I felt such wonder about airports. So, like, I did get a kick out of escalators as a kid, and I was at least medium scared

of the bottom or the top. Yeah, definitely. Where it seems like it sucks in, you know? kick out of escalators as a kid and I was at least medium scared. For sure. The bottom or the top. Yeah, definitely. Where it seems like it sucks in, you know? You are pretty young being exposed to that thrill. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

As a kid, you're like, it really is like, oh, cool, I'm riding the thing. I have a little toy with me. The toy's going to go on the rail. And you know. Oh yeah. You just, I don't know. We've lost our sense of wonder, reclaiming it with CivPod. Oh boy, this is an interesting next number to get into. Here we go. Next number is 2012.

2012 is when one escalator for the BART public transit system in San Francisco made global news because the escalator filled with too much human poop and could not continue running. Why was there any human poop in the escalator? The broad problem especially in the United States of we just do not provide public restrooms. Yes. And so unhoused folks relieved themselves partly in the just transit station. When an escalator reaches its end point, it's really well designed to keep like, to be gross, it's gross, but it's what is like

to keep solid things out of it, and poop and pee can get in. San Francisco Chronicle journalist, Will Kane said, quote, well, the sheer volume of human waste was surprising. Its presence was not. Once the stations closed, the bottom of BART station stairwells in downtown San Francisco are often a prime location for homeless people to camp for the night or find

a private place to relieve themselves." And so the proximity to escalators, just some of it got in. And over time, the escalator at the Civic Center stop on Bay Area rapid transit, they had to open up the escalator and get the poop out in order to keep it running. Oh man. I mean, that's kind of sad. It sounded kind of funny when you first started the number and it's actually a terrifying indictment of our society. Damn. Yeah, we really need restrooms in general. People would not do this if they had any other option. Yeah, of course. They don't want to be arrested or something for basic bodily functions. And Will Kane in

the Chronicle, he does a good job of laying that out in his piece. He's not being a jerk or something. The piece had a note on the front for Redditors. They said, I know this blew up in 2018 on Reddit and then it blew up again, but this is originally from 2012 because just once in a while a Redditors, they said like I know this blew up in 2018 on reddit and then it blew up again But this originally from 2012 because just like once in a while a redditor laughs about it. Yeah, but it's weird. That's yeah Yeah, it's definitely weird. It's really hard not to notice like newer built things I mean, I'm mostly thinking New York and LA where I've lived but like more newly built public space things how often They're completely designed to not have stuff that homeless people could use to the detriment of everyone.

Yes. Yeah. And once you start noticing that, you're like, why aren't there no benches in this area for this huge train station? Oh, yeah. Okay. That's why. Exactly.

Yeah. Apparently one name for that is hostile architecture. Yeah. I've heard that term. Yeah, and yeah, so a result of hostility about public restrooms is escalator breakdowns because the waste just gets in there. I imagine this made the rounds in right-wing media. It was like, San Francisco, duh, duh, duh.

People that love to rip on the same five liberal coded cities. The escalator's filled with poop. This didn't happen in, I don't know, conservative suburbs somewhere. It's like, yeah, there's no, I don't know. You're right, it didn't. Yeah, and the good news with escalator design is that other than pee and poop, most solid objects have an extremely hard time getting caught in an escalator. The technical term is entrapment.

It's like that fear of, oh no, I'll get sucked into an escalator. Unfortunately, very, very small things will get trapped. I couldn't find a ton of data, but I'll link a 1997 analysis of pediatric injuries from escalator entrapment. Because like a very small body part can get stuck. Oh my god. The modern ones are really well-machined to not let that happen. The gaps are incredibly tight and small.

Were there, I mean, how often are there injuries on them? They found like a few dozen reported injuries in 10 years. So it's super rare. Okay. One very good feature of modern escalators that seems scary is like those metal grooves in the steps. Like that seems like sharp and sort of hostile, but that actually prevents anything wide from getting caught between the step and the top or bottom of the system. And only a very skinny object goes in there. If it's something like a stiletto heel, you can just take your shoe off and they need to fix the escalator, but you're okay. And another key component is the little brushes along the sides of the escalator when you're riding.

Technical name for those is skirt deflectors. They're there to alert riders with the feeling of a brush if they're too close to where the side meets the side of the steps as you're riding. They also try to divert things from falling into it. There was a clip, sorry, I meant to share this before we were on. My wife sent me a clip of one of the Real Housewives entering BravoCon in Vegas came down an escalator in stiletto heels and both heels got stuck in. And like it got to the bottom and she like had slipped, slipped out of her shoes and

then the shoes are just like sitting there. It's like both of them were stuck in there. Apparently that's the most common entrapment is extremely skinny heels on women's shoes, yeah. Man. And then they're usually okay. The most common escalator injury is a fall. Your stiletto could lead to that.

But other than that, entrapment is the super rare distant second place. And escalators are like meant to be safe even though those metal steps look kind of hardcore and the glowing ends are kind of hardcore. They're putting a lot of effort into making it as safe as possible. I was imagining the escalator apologist being like, you could fall on anything. That's not the escalator's fault.

You could fall anywhere. That's pretty much the logic. Yeah. There are 11 falls on escalator. It was stairs that could have fall. Why doesn't the stair lobby get hit with this? I don't know. And their other thing is you don't have to walk on it. If you don't walk, you're a lot less likely to fall or have an entrapment problem. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense too. So that's real pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Why walk? It's doing the work for you.

Unless you're in a huge rush. The last number this week is the year 1896. The year 1896 is when American engineer Jesse Reno completed the first practical working escalator in the world. Nice. Where was that? It was at Coney Island in New York. Ooh, that kind of makes sense.

Yeah. Where did it go up from like the subway? And that gets us into mega takeaway number one. The first practical working escalator was an amusement park ride with no steps It was just a big belt with like little foot spots but you were mostly supposed to put your butt on a railing in the middle and It was part of an amusement park ride at Coney Island. Oh So it wasn't even like practicals designed to be like whoa

automated craziness. Yeah, partly. And it was also initially pitched to the New York City subway system and they rejected the pitch. So then he set it up at Coney Island as a way to get to the top of a helter skelter, which is one of those big slides, like an amusement park slide from the old days. And then when it obviously worked at Coney Island, then Transit Systems got involved.

Okay. I thought it was its own standalone ride. Because apparently people got so excited about it, it became an attraction. Oh, okay. When they initially set it up, it was just a more convenient way to get to the top of slide.

Like, oh, can you believe it? A slide. And then people were more excited about the world debut of the escalator. It does feel very, you know, world's old world's fairy, like that kind of, you know. Yeah. What? What? Do you call this again? Like that kind of, you know.

It actually is too. Then they showed some slightly more innovative escalators at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris and it won a gold medal and it was a big thing. Wow. Yeah, yeah. It's exactly right. Yeah. The automated staring.

Doth you ascend to heaven? You know, got a glowing review in the weird gazette that this kid's talking in front of it. It's very Ben and Straw hats. Yeah, it's very... No, I don't rock it. I'll keep going up stairs the traditional way. It's worked fine for me my whole life. Just naysaying guy refusing to get on it. It's basically all the jokes you would imagine. Yes, some of that happened too.

The key sources here, it's a feature for Popular Mechanics by writer Matt Blitz, a feature for Smithsonian Magazine by writer Megan Carpenter, and then that industry trade journal Elevator Worlds. Yeah. They ran an amazing essay by Dr. Lee Gray. Lee Gray is professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. So thank you, Elevator Worlds.

Old timey political cartoon of, you know, McKinley leading us up the escalator to scientific ruin or something. Like, wait, are they afraid of it? It's like some inscrutable old comic. Is this anti him? Is it pro? I can't really tell. There's a pig with money.

The pig's eating money. Is he the pig? Yeah. The historian who explains it is always like, I know it's impossible to understand and the country loved this. This was the biggest image of the country for five years. This sold 80 million copies. He sold?

What? Who bought? Yeah, they'd buy it in a pack of Bazooka Joe or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so this first ever escalator, again, it didn't have steps, really. It had a railing in the middle that people would rest on. And then your foot could go into a little slot, almost like the things

on a climbing wall or something. But also, this first escalator in 1896, it was not the first invention of an escalator. At least two previous engineers fully drew up a design and never built it. Damn. And it turns out the first designing of an escalator was way back in 1859. 1859 is before the US Civil War. A Harvard graduate named Nathan Ames won a patent for what he named revolving stairs. And it's the entire modern idea. It's a conveyor belt of steps where they go under you as they go back up. Did the Civil War derail the plans?

My rudimentary understanding of history, whatever, there's a big event. It's just like everything stops. As long as nothing happens in the next five years, I'm going to design these moving stairs. Damn it! The Civil War. Oh, yeah. That's the Civil War now. I can't do.

There's a recent episode about emergency fire systems where that kind of happens. Because like a guy in the Confederacy had the patents and then they couldn't do it, you know? But this one, it basically couldn't happen because just the rest of technology had not caught up. Like it reminds me of the thing where maybe Leonardo da Vinci drew a picture of a helicopter. But like you needed other technology to actually build it. You can't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't think that counts. I could draw a time machine, whatever. And then a ZipPod in many, many centuries, just like, one man drew the time machine. We're back to speaking old timey. We've gone fully, I don't know why, 3,000 years to go back to that voice. A science fiction straw hat. Yeah, yeah, really good. Yeah, this basically, Nathan Ames didn't have a way to power the revolving stairs.

Like it's really all like there's a moving handrail and everything. It's all the features of today, but it's made of wood. Didn't really figure out how even steam power could do it. And according to Lee Gray, quote, from a mechanical point of view, the design is pretty questionable. It probably wouldn't work. He had no idea how to hook a motor to it or what kind of engine could be used. Just way ahead of his time, man. Just like he needed electrification to come along and that would have worked. Yeah. Yeah. Well, sorry, man. Just- Like he needed electrification to come along and that would have worked. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, sorry loser. You should have invented electricity too. And like the other limit on his idea, because again, he drew this when James Buchanan is president, like it's very early in history. And the other limit is that it was before large stores. It was before airports, obviously. The train stations we had just basically had big marble staircases. His expectation was that this would be constructed in the

mansions of extremely wealthy people. Oh, okay. But those people either had an elevator or didn't need it. It's also interesting too to think of of things that were innovative at the time that now kind of have a connotation of tackiness, no offense to escalators, but you think of it as, you think of it as like, oh, it's something in the mall or in the subway or something. Whereas at the time when it was brand new, it would have been like, you know, this Duke has a moving staircase in their house. Whereas now if someone had like an escalator in their house, it would

be tacky, right? You know? Yes, it would. Yeah. Yeah. It's Or, or we think of the average rider as being halfway through an Auntie Anne's pretzel and the sugars dropping into the stairs and stuff. Yeah. Like it's not a, it's not an impressive thing. Yeah. And even like flight, like we don't dress up for it anymore and it's just kind of a thing, but it's still a miracle really.

It's really cool. Yeah, true. It's amazing. This guy drew a plane in, you know, 1400, but couldn't do anything with it. But he still credit him. He drew a bird-like thing. Sorry, loser. Go fight in the Civil War. And the drug is just a horse with wings. It's not, you know, it's not the thing. And yeah, and then another second engineer in 1889, his name was Lehman Souter. He lived in Philly. He patented something simply called the stairway.

And it would be a moving staircase with an endless chain, either hydraulic or propelling power he said would do it. And the technology was more workable. We had more electrification in 1889. He just didn't have the capital or the situation to build it. Then the third person, Jesse Reno, was one of many engineers in New York City who was saying, what can I invent for the subway system? Like, surely I can invent something for that.

And he pitched what he called an inclined elevator. And the entire pitch was, you have elevators, they can't carry very many people at a time. This can bring a lot of people without an operator in and out of a subway station. And it's a great idea and the subway system passed. They said, no thanks. He just has this all designed as he's in New York City, and he pitches it to Coney Islands. And the two advantages with Coney Island were they had a Kearney mentality. They just build stuff and figure it out later. But also, according to Charles Denson of the

Coney Island History Project, quote, Coney Island was kind of like the Silicon Valley of its day. You could just try technologies there and technologies could be an attraction all on their own. And so that applied to obvious amusement park stuff like roller coasters, but it also applied to just large scale electric lights. It also applied to actual technology like baby incubators. Like that would just be a thing at Coney Island and then the rest of actual medical science used it. Step right up and incubate your baby! Bring cold babies! Your baby looks cold!

And the woman's very recently like, I don't know, and the man's like, just give our baby to the carny. Just give it to the carny's man. Come on. Huge burly, like, hairy arm dude. It's like, you give baby! He fine, it is warm him up, he's good. It is Coney Island, these are the innovators of our time. And yeah, and so he built his inclined elevator in real life to go to the top of, I know I keep saying a helter skelter like people know, it's one of those spiral slides on like a little cute tower. And then rapidly the inclined elevator became the famous

part, not the slide. And then once people saw that that worked, within a year, the New York City Transit people were giving Reno contracts to build these. His first one was at the Brooklyn Bridge. Nice. In 1897, he set up an inclined elevator to get you up onto the elevated train platform on the bridge. Because if people don't know, it's always had like a subway train above ground in addition to roads. And so they built one of the first ones to get up to that. Look who's come crawling back.

No one's going to use your stupid moving stairs. Well, guess what? The price has just doubled. I wish he did that. Yeah, just squeeze them. You know what else has gone up mechanically? The price of this. Yeah.

Immediately he was like, had his life threatened by the New York political machine. He's like, oh, yeah, you can just have it. You can have it. It's fine. It's fine. Please don't. I don't want to end up in the garbage. Thank you.

They like, they dig a limb out of the window of the tallest building in the city, but it's only like four stories tall. So it's like, oh, this is dangerous. But I mean, if I land in that garbage, I don't know. Yeah. I don't want to hurt my elbow. Here, take my technology. Yeah.

And yeah, and also customers did not trust it. They demanded to see Reno ride the Brooklyn Bridge escalator himself, and then followed by the biggest guy they could find, who was a nearby policeman, and then followed by a woman who was basically just shoved onto it without her permission. And then when all three of those people rode safely, the rest of the public got on. The 1890s were a weird time. It was very bad. There wasn't some stunt where they like put an elephant on it and it died or something. That was always happening around then, right?

Right, right. At least everybody survived because it's safe. Yeah, another amazing thing about escalator history is from the beginning, Reno's design had like rubber padded sections at the top and bottom and was like oriented to not entrap stuff and they've worked really hard from the beginning to make these actually safe. Like, I assume there would be a bunch of horrible entrapment injuries or something, but from jump, they've tried to make it work good for that.

Yeah, well, the way you described it with like the footholds, it sounded kind of dangerous, or it sounded like there could be easy accidents on it, the way I was picturing it, but I don don't know maybe it was safer than I thought. Yeah and I think people expected less safety in life so then they had their wits about them more if that makes sense. Uh huh. Like it's one of those kind of paradoxes. Yeah.

Yeah there's like carriages barreling down the streets full of people at all times you know. Yeah. So everyone was just in a constant state of alert. It was great Yeah, everyone in the 1890s just Turning the corner on pick a pick up there's a barrel Yeah Turning the corner on, pick up, pick up, there's a barrel. The first several reviews of the escalator are just different screams, like please scream and trusting scream.

And yeah, there's basically two more steps for then escalators spreading across the US and the world because Jesse Reno proceeded to build the first company making escalators, they had sold more than 20 of the machines by 1911 in Toronto and Seattle and Boston. Then they willingly got bought out by the Otis Elevator Company. And Otis is named after Elisha Otis, who introduced the elevator safety brake in the 1850s and made elevators a practical device because it won't kill everyone necessarily if something breaks. That's what the safety break does. From there, he said, let's buy out Jesse Reno, scale up his operation and also dominate escalators. And they did that.

And one year earlier, they bought out the patents and a trademark of another inventor named Charles Seberger. Charles Seberger trademarked the English word escalator. He coined it from adapting French words of l'escalade to signify climbing. Otis bought the designs and the existing company and the name and made that a thing from there. Is Otis still the main manufacturer of escalators? because there's still tons of elevators, right? Yeah, they it seems like they pretty much monopolized it until around the 1950s and now there's a few different companies But they're still big. Yeah, they're still one of the big ones

Oh, and they also there was a lawsuit in 1950 because Otis was claiming the trademark on the word escalator, and the competitor successfully sued based on the phrasing in Otis' own advertising to say that it's now a generic word, and they didn't own it anymore. Oh. So until 1950, only Otis could call an escalator an escalator. Don't forget to go up the stair-im-a-doos. I don't know. Yeah. The moving stairs. We all know what those are. Otis is like, careful.

Watch it. Yeah. I bought out the escalator guy. I'll buy your a** out too. Yeah. Guy really had a human talent for recognizing the need to move people from a place to another. Yeah. Yeah, they were really on it. It is very business savvy to be the main elevator company and say, let's get escalators too,

and not just be like, surely escalators will go nowhere. They did invest in it and gobble it up. Yeah, or invest in it and replace them all with elevators or something impractically. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, those business moves are why any of us have been on an escalator pretty much. And folks, that's a huge mega takeaway and tons of numbers.

We're going to take a quick break and then do a few more counterintuitive takeaways about escalator logic. And we're back. And we're back with takeaway number two. Making escalator steps out of metal is safer than making them out of wood. The two obvious ways to injure yourself on a metal escalator are less dangerous than the alternatives. I guess that makes sense. I mean, why is a wood one, you get splinters too or just like

declines faster and then there's like divots and holes and stuff you can get stuck in? These sources here are a piece for BBC News by Alice Evans and Clifford Thompson and then a feature on some of the only remaining wooden escalators in New York City by Alice Obscura. Because the two risks on an escalator are entrapment and falling. With entrapment, a metal one, you can machine it to be tighter and more precise dimensions and so there's just a lot less risk of entrapment. Also think of a horrible joke of the elevator somehow. I said it again. It's a thing. Yeah. I'm sure I did it. I didn't notice like five times. The escalator like entrapping you like a police officer. It's just like, you know,

right outside the bar and you're drunk and the escalators like blackmails you or something. I don't know just But then but the most just the wooden ones the the metal ones will look the other way And and yeah And then the other risk like the main type of escalator injury is falling down on metal steps Like that is as dangerous as it seems that does hurt Yeah, but the alternative is like maybe a wooden escalator would hurt you a little less if you fell on it. But at a population scale, it's shockingly more dangerous because wooden escalators can

burst into flames. Whoa. I guess that makes sense. And there was a significant one of these tragedies in the UK a lot more recently than you would think. In 1987, Kings Cross station in London had a wooden escalator that burst into flames and killed 31 people. Oh my God. Yeah, like I think this is bigger news in the UK maybe. I'd never heard of it ever. Me neither.

But 31 people died, Lots of other people were injured or inhaled very toxic fumes. And the BBC says the suspected cause is a discarded match from a smoker. London only banned smoking in subsurface train and tube stations in 1984. Before then you could smoke on the tube and stuff and so in 1987 I think somebody was still sneaking a cigarette and the discarded match made contact with a buildup of grease and dust in escalator number four in King's Cross and Eyewitness says quote you heard a dull whoompf sound and when I turned around you could see a thick black wall of smoke Man, like it just immediately flamed everyone on board.

That's crazy. It's really, I mean, it's impressive how often the most banal sounding SIFPOD episodes get unbelievably tragic. Or sometimes, or racist. It's one or the other. It's either like, you know, marshmallows killed 10 million people or it's like, you know, the history of paper is because of colonialism on Haiti or something. It's always like, it always takes such a weird turn. But yeah, man, that's,

I had no, I had never heard of that. And even when you were describing it, I was like, not imagining 31 people. That's crazy. Yeah. And like that and other tragedies led worldwide regulators to accept the risk of slightly worse fall injuries in exchange for these not bursting into flames. Cause like they're also greased up so they run well and dust gets in there. It is a tinderbox, a wooden escalator. It is totally tragic and then also I feel like it's good news that some of the scariness is that they're metal and they're metal because it's way safer. That's great that they're metal. You should be really happy about that. Yeah.

There's a practical reason to have it like cool when you're a kid. And like a robot's mouth or something. Yes, exactly. It's really kind of scary that way, but it's good. It's good that way. Yeah. You said there's still some wooden ones left in New York? Yeah, apparently as of 2021, there's only a couple and one of them is on the upper floors

of the flagship Macy's department store in Manhattan. Ooh. Atlas Obscura says that all of the machinery under that is completely modern and built to really, really not do this tinderbox thing. But they preserved some of the wooden steps from the original Otis-made escalators at Macy's from the 1920s. So it's New York history. It's really cool. I should check that out.

And it's only some of them apparently. Like it's by some bathrooms and you have to get above the lower floors. So it's really hidden. It's kind of an Easter egg. Too bad we're doing this taping now. I'll go in like three months and be like, I was on those wooden steps and you'd be like, what? Who the hell is this? I don't care. I don't remember who you are, my old friend. As soon as the taping is done, our business relationship is over. Lose this number now. This is how Alex is off the pod, guys.

I hate to break it to you. It's all business. Incredibly ambitious. Listen, I'm all about the building transportation industry. I'm building new escalators. I'm building new elevators. The flat people moving things at airports. That's me.

That's all I'm about. Steps is money. I'm moving up from the ground floor to the upper floor in a slow automated way. Oh, and also one other link about this, there's an arts blog name, this is Colossal. They have cool pictures of a Sydney, Australia transit station. Apparently that station installed wooden escalators in the 1930s, replaced them with metal but like left the steps in storage. And then in 2017 an artist turned the steps into this like a giant undulating sculpture

on the ceiling of the transit station, which is really cool. Yeah, that sounds cool. So these are these are a neat piece of history if you can find them anywhere. And also it's great. We don't use them anymore. Really good. The next counterintuitive surprise is takeaway number three. Escalators would be more efficient and move people more quickly if everybody stood still

on them. When there's a culture of walking on escalators, it makes them a lot less efficient from a people moving practice. The one walking individual goes faster, but the whole group of people gets there slower. Why is that? It's because we reserve half of the step space for walkers. Oh, okay. So if everybody stood and were kind of side to side, we'd get more people up the

escalator more quickly. Yeah. Walkers think they're improving the system, I think, not just getting themselves faster, but surveys consistently find that less than half of people want to walk. So that means that a lot of people are just waiting for a standing spot and either rudely blocking the walk side or just stuck. This is also assuming though that people would stand like shoulder to shoulder with strangers though, right?

They might not want to do that anyway. Even if there wasn't a walking side, they might want their own step. That's true and apparently people are somewhat more comfortable with a little closer personal space if they know everybody's just standing. If you think people might make a move, you want a little more personal space. So it's sort of a paradox that way. I feel like I often walk up the escalator. I feel like I'm being called out here by this factoid. I thought I was helping. I guess I'm hurting, holding us all back. The other thing is if you walk, it's fine because we need the change to happen at an

entire population level. We need city rules basically. Otherwise, just go ahead and walk if people are already saving half the step. Why not? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like that'd be hard to induce people to do it the other way, though. Unless, I don't know, if there's one of those nudge ways you can do it where people step on two at a time, or I don't know, something lights up and people step on it.

Because I don't know if you put a little sign that's like, everyone get on together, shoulder to shoulder, and don't walk. No one's going to listen to it. It's odd. Two cities have tried messaging this as a rule and sources here are CBC News in Canada and also The Guardian. In 2016, Transport for London,

which runs the London Underground, they tested a no walking rule for the escalators at Hoburn Station in central London. And they had like employees at each end telling people like like lifeguards or something and they found the escalators moved more people per hour rather than the half-standing half-walking approach yeah and the other city that's tried this is Nagoya Japan they instituted a rule in 2023 where everyone must stand on the escalator they put up signs and apparently the future

of it could be holograms that tell you about this, like pop up, which seems upsetting, but it's fine. It's Will.i.am for some reason. Like what? Like we already had him in the system. Just, hey guys, get shoulder to shoulder on the thing. Everyone's like, is that the black eyed peas guy? I just, no one listens to the message. They're just like, why is that that guy? Anyway, I'm walking up. On top of just the people efficiency thing, if everyone stands on the escalator, there are also less injuries. Almost all escalator falls involve walking on it and those injuries hold up the system a bit.

And then the last really weird reason this is more efficient is that escalators might break less often if we all stand on them because apparently they are designed for one person to stand in the middle, not for two sides of, like it's designed to support the center more than one side or the other on the step. But if we all stood in the center, we wouldn't move more people, right? Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. But you're saying side by side, it doesn't have any wear and tear. Like if people stand side by side but aren't walking, then even though it's designed for

the middle, it's not causing any wear and tear on it that is a problem. Right. Yeah. According to Otis and also these sources, there aren't great studies of this, but anecdotally, the people running escalators and escalator systems have said that if everybody stands on the right side, there's more weight consistently on the right side of the steps. And then the steps wear funny. And then eventually the escalator breaks down sooner. You have to flip the steps like a mattress or something? Yeah, kind of. Yeah.

Because it's a really calibrated system for both sides wearing evenly and apparently it's designed even though they should just look at how people use it in real life, it's designed to support one person in the middle of the step. But if you're in the middle of the step, you're probably not using the handrails, right? Unless you're reaching pretty far out. The expectation is that you're reaching to one or both, even though it's a little far. Yeah. I don't think I've ever ridden an escalator like that, right? Yeah, even if it's like totally empty

You're on the side and you have your arm on the side. I would feel like I'm gonna block somebody. Yeah, it's it's such a like manspreading Yeah, you're not like leaning on the on the on the handrail right next to you. You're like reaching for it and impractically I don't know. Maybe I'm imagining it bigger than it really is, but yeah, I've never written it like that. Sorry, Otis. I don't mean to tell Otis about escalators, but we've been doing this podcast for 30, 40 minutes or something. I think I know a little something about escalators. And Alex emailed me beforehand, so I thought about it for another couple seconds then too.

So I think we know what we're talking about. Yeah. And this could be an urban legend. It's a thing that people have said anecdotally. And the biggest anecdote is that in Nanjing, China in 2017, the operators of the subway system there said that they audited their escalators and 95% of them had too much wear and tear on one side because it's the standing side and there's just more human weight on it day to day.

The lowest stakes urban legend of all time. Like middle school kids like did you hear about the slightly unevenly worn escalators? Like who cares? Then another kid tries to talk about the real escalator full of poop and the peers don't care. Peers don't care at all. Like, whatever. Boring.

I'm trying to think too because sometimes the New York subway really is crowded. There's like a huge group of people going up the escalator. I'm trying to think of if it's really crowded if I've seen people side by side, I think Sometimes if it's like really crowded people do cram onto it and no one's walking because there's too many people But I could be also imagining that in my head. So I'll have to pay attention to that next couple times I'm in a really crowded subway And I think I've also been on one or two Transit escalators where it's just so skinny that

there's only room for one right around the step. So then you just stand probably and you're stuck. But yeah, it's a very specific and weird thing. And it also varies between countries, which side is the standing side, which side is the walking side in culture. So it's all just a weird thing. Interesting that's universal though. You said that like China had found that people have gravitated towards standing on a side and or walking on a side like it's natural.

I don't know. Yeah. It's just like an unspoken cultural agreement or once in a while somebody yells at you because they're walking. But yeah. Yeah. Well someone might be in a huge hurry and some people might not be and they don't mind waiting as long. Yeah. Doesn't always mean you're in a hole.

There are legit hurries, yeah. I have thought that from time to time. When I'm driving and it is the rear legit hurry, I'm like, come on. Yeah. Why don't you know? I'm going to honk at you, but I'm not one of those guys who honks at people. Is this like real? I should get like two a year. I should get like two a year.

I should get like two a year. This is one of them. There's like a special button that's like the real honk. Yeah. It's just like, Aruga, one of those. Like, whoa, get out of this guy's way. He's, you know. Oh, lady with a baby.

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. I gotta incubate this baby. I'm on my way to Coney Island. The Nathan's baby incubator. Yeah. Stop it, Nathan's. Like, come on, come on.

Baby's freezing. Incubate the baby first. Just shut up and give me the hot dog. Shut up. I'm hungry. Give me the chili dog. Yeah. And then we have one last takeaway that's yet another counterintuitive thing because takeaway number four.

Our minds experience a broken escalator phenomenon, which makes a stopped escalator riskier than walking on stairs. It's like a joke, like Mitch Hedberg has a joke about it where a stopped escalator is stairs. Because of how our minds work, it's actually more dangerous than just stairs. We think on some level it is still moving or we need to move our bodies the way we do on a moving escalator. That Mitch Hedberg joke was the other thing I thought of when you asked me my relationship

with escalators. The preeminent escalator comedian of our time. One joke temporarily becomes stairs. Sorry for the convenience. Apparently not. That's a good match, Enver. People think what people can't reconcile like standing slash walking when it's an escalator, they're so used to it moving that they try to recalibrate for it, you mean? Yeah, and there's only two real studies of this, but they're pretty meaningful studies and yeah, our minds are just- That seems like enough. More funding, more effort, yeah. And one source here, it's a CBC radio interview with Dr. Raymond Reynolds, a lecturer in sports science and motor control at Birmingham University in the UK.

And the other source is BBC Science Focus Magazine. This Reynolds study, he coined the name broken escalator phenomenon and he looked into it because he'd heard anecdotal reports about people having psychological discomfort when there's a broken escalator in the London Underground and they just walk up it. I would have assumed it's because we worry the machine will suddenly turn on again. But the issue is actually that when we ride a moving escalator, we tend to lean forward a little bit. And also if we're walking on it, we tend to walk slightly faster than usual because that's the pace.

That's just what you need to do because it's moving under you. And so Reynolds's team observed and studied a group of people on a stopped escalator and watching their bodies, they saw people still accelerated a bit as if they were stepping onto a moving escalator, even though they 100% knew and saw that it was broken. That makes total sense. I feel like I would probably do that. I'd lean forward and yeah, I'd walk,

you'd walk like a moving escalator, at least like a little bit, you'd probably be a little off on your feet, I don't know. Yeah, and then that's a slightly bigger fall risk. Like, stairs, you don't do this mental flip. And then the other study, it's from a team at Imperial College, London. It's like transferable to escalators.

They use those flat moving platforms that I think of as people movers like at an airport. They found that if someone walked on one of those 20 times, their brain was conditioned to expect it to still be moving the 21st time, even if they were told many times in advance that on time 21 will stop and it won't be moving. Psychologically, they still thought it was going to be moving and they still took a big first step. Uh-huh. Well, the ground ones are even weirder because you don't really need to recalibrate how you move, right? Yes. Yeah. You just get on.

You just do anyway, probably. Yeah. Because the escalator, you have to make sure you get the next step, and you have to walk faster. But no amount of speed, you're still just going to hit the ground. So yeah, that's interesting that it still has that effect. Exactly. Yeah, our preconceptions in our minds make it so a stopped escalator

is less safe than stairs. A stopped people mover is less safe than the ground. We are going to move different in a way that could make us fall. So it's good they block it off. It's not a convenience Mitch Hedberg. Sorry. RIP. Now we're tearing his jokes apart. Yeah. He's like, damn. We're doing a long CinemaSins unpacking of Mitch Hedberg's punch lines. Just like, actually. You actually can't catch up with your dreams later.

Ding, got him. Meme graphics. Folks, that is the main episode for this week, and I want to say another thank you to Dan Hopper for covering a week here and making an episode happen. And again, I want to recommend Thrill of Defeat. It is his new heartfelt, thoughtful, and really revealing podcast about the life of sports fandom. If you just like good podcasts, it's for you. And of course, if you like sports podcasts, the newest one, as I say this, is the Vancouver

Canucks is the team. I know basically nothing about it, but a passive guest, Stefan Haak, is on it. I'm sure that's a good episode to check it out. And hey, you're in the outro of this podcast episode. We've got fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Mega Takeaway Number 1. The first practical working escalator was a Coney Island amusement park ride with no

stair steps that had been rejected by New York City's subway system. Takeaway number two, making escalator steps out of metal is safer than making them out of wood, even though the metal is a little scary looking. Takeaway number three, escalators would be more efficient and would move people more quickly if everyone stood still on the steps. Takeaway number four, our minds experience a broken escalator phenomenon, which makes a stopped escalator riskier to walk on than stairs. And then so many numbers this week, we covered the most giant escalators in the world, the

design of escalators, the safety features of escalators, the extremely rare entrapment dangers of escalators, an escalator that's filled with poop, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason that this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the only two escalators in all of the state of Wyoming, and what that could mean for the future of U.S. politics. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show, for a library of more than 21 dozen other secretly

incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fund bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include an amazing essay by Dr. Lee Gray, a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, that was published by the trade journal Elevator World. Also a lot of well-done historical writing, such as a piece for Popular Mechanics by Matt Blitz, a feature for Smithsonian magazine by Megan Carpenter,

a piece about the King's Cross disaster by Alice Evans and Clifford Thompson for the BBC News, further digital resources from CBC News, The Guardian, Atlas Obscura, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that Dan and I each recorded this in Lenapehoking. On my end, that's the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people as well as the Mohican people, Skadegook people, and others. On Dan's end, that's primarily the land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Mohican people.

And I want to acknowledge that in my location, Dan's location, and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And join the free CIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Cause each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 48 that's about the topic of eyeglasses.

Fun fact there, Superman's Clark Kent identity wears glasses because of the inspiration of silent film comedian Harold Lloyd. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Boodos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to The Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to

our members and thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.