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].) 



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, gendemen !" •* 



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 Otis safety, of which a modified form is still used, 

 consisted essentially of a leaf wagon spring, on the car frame, 

 kept strained by the tension of the hoisting cables. If these 

 gave way, the spring, released, drove dogs into continuous 

 racks on the vertical guides, holding the car or platform in 

 place. 



The first complete elevator machine in the United 

 States, constructed in 1855, was a complex and in- 

 efficient 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 build- 

 ings 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 eleva- 

 ting 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 btiild- 

 ing heights increased it was gradually replaced by 

 hydraulic, and ultimately by electrical, systems. 



8 



BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



