On Sept. 20, 1853, Elisha Graves Otis sold his first “hoist machine,” or elevator, featuring an automatic safety brake he had patented. His seemingly simple invention was designed to stop a platform ...

In Bristol, Conn., just a 9 iron from the campus headquarters of ESPN, in a valley near a historic amusement park, a strange white tower is the only building sticking up into the sky. Hawks nest in ...

Without elevators, cities wouldn’t exist as they do today. And without safety elevators, most people would never get on one. The first safety elevator — which, in the event of the cable breaking, ...

The history of the elevator, if you define it as a platform that can move people and objects up and down, is actually a rather long one. Rudimentary elevators are known to have been in use in ancient ...

In 1853 Elisha Otis climbed onto a platform which was then hoisted high above a large crowd of New Yorkers, nervy with anticipation. A man with an axe cut the cable, the crowd gasped, and Otis’s ...

Many technological advancements have changed the way we design in the past 150 years, but perhaps none has had a greater impact than the invention of the passenger elevator. Prior to Elisha Otis’ ...

Many technological advancements have changed the way we design in the past 150 years, but perhaps none has had a greater impact than the invention of the passenger elevator. Prior to Elisha Otis’ ...

The invention of the elevator enabled a whole new type of architecture – and had a profound effect on our culture, writes Jonathan Glancey. Scary stories about elevators are a dime a dozen: lurid ...

In 1894, some ten years before automobiles mainstreamed horizontal transportation, the Otis Elevator Company installed the world’s first push-button elevator. Arguably this small vehicle did more to ...