Elisha Otis
American industrialist and founder of the Otis Elevator Company
1811 CE to 1861 CE
Elisha Graves Otis (August 3, 1811 – April 8, 1861) is an American industrialist, founder of the Otis Elevator Company, and inventor of a safety device that prevents elevators from falling if the hoisting cable fails.
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Elisha Otis' first elevator is installed (at 488 Broadway, New York City) on March 23, 1857.
At the age of forty, while he was cleaning up an abandoned sawmill in Yonkers that he was supposed to convert into a bedstead factory, he had wondered how he could get all the old debris up to the upper levels of the factory.
He had heard of hoisting platforms, but these often broke, and he was unwilling to take the risks.
He and his sons, who are also tinkerers, had designed their own "safety elevator" and tested it successfully.
He initially thought so little of it he neither patented it nor requested a bonus from his superiors for it, nor did he try to sell it.
After having made several sales, and after the bedstead factory declined, Otis took the opportunity to make an elevator company out of it, initially called Union Elevator Works and later Otis Brothers & Co.
No orders came to him over the next several months, but soon after, the 1853 New York World's Fair offered a great chance at publicity.
At the New York Crystal Palace, Otis amazed a crowd when he ordered the only rope holding the platform on which he was standing cut.
The rope was severed by an axeman, and the platform fell only a few inches before coming to a halt.
The safety locking mechanism had worked, and people gained greater willingness to ride in traction elevators; these elevators will quickly become the type in most common usage and will help make present-day skyscrapers possible.
After the World's Fair, Otis had received continuous orders, doubling each year.
He develops different types of engines, like a three-way steam valve engine, which can transition the elevator between up to down and stop it rapidly.
At the age of forty, while he was cleaning up an abandoned sawmill in Yonkers that he was supposed to convert into a bedstead factory, he had wondered how he could get all the old debris up to the upper levels of the factory.
He had heard of hoisting platforms, but these often broke, and he was unwilling to take the risks.
He and his sons, who are also tinkerers, had designed their own "safety elevator" and tested it successfully.
He initially thought so little of it he neither patented it nor requested a bonus from his superiors for it, nor did he try to sell it.
After having made several sales, and after the bedstead factory declined, Otis took the opportunity to make an elevator company out of it, initially called Union Elevator Works and later Otis Brothers & Co.
No orders came to him over the next several months, but soon after, the 1853 New York World's Fair offered a great chance at publicity.
At the New York Crystal Palace, Otis amazed a crowd when he ordered the only rope holding the platform on which he was standing cut.
The rope was severed by an axeman, and the platform fell only a few inches before coming to a halt.
The safety locking mechanism had worked, and people gained greater willingness to ride in traction elevators; these elevators will quickly become the type in most common usage and will help make present-day skyscrapers possible.
After the World's Fair, Otis had received continuous orders, doubling each year.
He develops different types of engines, like a three-way steam valve engine, which can transition the elevator between up to down and stop it rapidly.